I want to see meteorites
well lucky for you, i just took a whole class on planetary geology, so here's a couple of fun meteorites.
but first, a definition. meteorites are fragments of the primordial solar nebula that were not accumulated into the present planets or come from planets in our system.
widmanstatten structures are very cool and present in many meteorites and look like the photo below. they are brought out by acid etching meteorites after cutting and polishing them. they are thought to be formed in the centers of planetary and smaller bodies, and probably what the earth's core looks like.
stony-iron meteorites are popular favorites for slabs because they often are a mix of, as you might guess, iron and olivines. they look like this:
among the famous meteorites is allan hills 84001, a carbonaceous meteorite found in antarctica and from mars made famous for the potential biotic (made by living creatures) structures. this one has been the subject of heated debate, but personally i'm not convinced that it's biotic.
and another famous meteorite, angra dos reis. this is one of 6 meteorites classified as an angrite, a meteorite that (might be) from mercury. angrites are cool as hell and there's a lot out there about them and why they may or may not be from mercury, too much for me to discuss in this post, but i definitely recommend looking into them because they're really interesting.
meteorites are super cool! if you want to learn more, looking into the research around the two meteorites is a good intro to how meteorite research works, the challenges that comes with studying extraterrestrial objects, and the rigorous scientific debate that occurs within the planetary geology community. enjoy!
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dreaming up a syllabus for an imaginary course on metanarratives about gameplay, which i think would go something like:
unit 1: who do you think you are i am - auto-documentary & games
Vlogs and the Hyperreal, Folding Ideas
The Slow Death of Let's Play Videos, Meraki (to ~10:00)
World Record Progression: Mike Tyson, Summoning Salt
ROBLOX_OOF.mp3, hbomberguy
Life as a Bokoblin: A Zelda Nature Documentary, Monster Maze
optional: Braindump on the History of Let's Plays, slowbeef
unit 2: what like it's hard? - intro to challenge narratives
Chapter 26: Games as Narrative Play: Two Structures for Narrative Play, Rules of Play
A different kind of challenge run: Minimalist 100% (BOTW), Wolf Link
Surviving 100 Days on Just Dirt, Mogswamp
Can You Beat DARK SOULS III with Only Firebombs, the Backlogs
Is it Possible to Beat Super Mario 3D World while permanently crouching?, Ceave Gaming
The Pacifist Challenge - Beating Hollow Knight Without Collecting Soul [CHALLENGE] - Sample
optional: How to 100% Snowpeak Ruins in under 15 minutes, bewildebeest
unit 3: nelly you don't understand, i AM the narrative - form and function
The Future of Writing about Games, Jacob Geller
Can You Beat GRIME Without Weapons?, the Backlogs
Mushroom Kingdom Championships, Ceave Gaming
My Life as a Barber in Hitman 2, MinMax (Leo Vader)
MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod, PowerPak
optional: Mega Microvideos, Matthewmatosis
the theme and structure is mostly intended to introduce at least one critical or historically contextual work followed by examples of the type of narrative in question.
in unit 1, this is the idea of "How do people talk about their own experiences in the context of YouTube and playing video games?" across three rather different kinds of documentaries. unit 2 is intended to take that lens of who is telling what tale and dial in on challenge running, where i first noticed the way some videos turn the story of overcoming a challenge into its own narrative that is distinct from but related to the narrative events of the game itself. unit 3 circles back to the bigger picture with a variety of examples that, to me, are maximally metanarrative, the emergent story of the player-narrator now functionally replacing the game's embedded narrative.
bonus unit: broken narratives
Glitch & the Grotesque at the MLA, Sylvia Korman
Watching time loop movies to escape my time loop, Leo Vader
The Stanley Parable, Dark Souls, and Intended Play, Folding Ideas
Breaking Madden, Jon Bois
The TRUTH about the Pizzaplex in FNAF: Security Breach, AstralSpiff
this one is highly underdeveloped, but i'd love to work out something more robust building on randomizer challenges that produce intentionally bizarre, semi-ironic "lore," and bois-esque endeavors to break games so hard the story itself crumbles. but that's really out of scope so i'm just including the links to things i couldn't bear to get rid of. more rambling abt the challenge runs I chose under the cut.
Challenge runs represent one of the most obvious places to start, due to being extremely plentiful and having a hook that makes a "here's how I did X thing in Y video game" format almost unavoidable. Minimalist 100% is an underrated and sweet straightforward example that I mostly include as a baseline for reporting-out style narrative; here are the facts, here's what happened, this is the thing that it is. Mogswamp's 100 Days on Just Dirt is similar in style, but the physical measuring of days is a delightful and, more importantly, external narrative device.
Now oriented, we get a taste of Ceave Gaming's narrative approach to Mario challenges with the no-crouching run, and while we still aren't at the degree of player-characters being constructed for the narrative's sake, the spirited belief in crouching sets the stage for other rhetoric in more extreme cases we'll see later.
The Backlogs' entire body of work qualifies here, but GRIME is the strongest inspiration for putting this list together. I include the DS3 firebombs run because what was initially a factual description of how his wife's use of firebombs inspired him to play differently in the original DS1 firebombs run has developed into full-blown multi-game narrative arc with the Firebomb Goddess (his wife, who also voices the character) compelling his in-game character to achieve his destined quest. Grime takes that even further,
In-Game Documentaries
I include Life as a Bokoblin mostly as a contrast to My Life as a Barber - there is a level of fictionalization and roleplay involved in the Zelda in-game documentary that highlights exactly what I want to single out when I am talking about metanarrative, the story about a story.
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