mercrow

[mercrow]

neon lights shakespeare is kind of a vibe

(illustrated by Lucie Louxor and designed by Arabella Jones)

[mercrow]

i have now for months been sitting on an attempt to make a cover for the mars house based on the original cover illustration of stranger in a strange land (which are not really similar other than containing mars and gender, but the cover is really good) and i'm not sure if i'm ever getting to that so just have the sketch.

[mercrow]

i dunno what everyone thinks is wrong with red valery k. the large print edition though is so bad that i almost should move it up more because you need to make an active effort to achieve that. hymn ones are both so mediocre, essential 5/10 that they may have to move down more; you tried nothing and i don't respect that (what is up with the sun iconography, this gives south america vibes if anything). german kingdoms is overrated, too much clutter (also neither cancellation marks nor perforated stamps existed in ~ 1800; for that matter not even stamps did - nor postcards, but that one i'm booking as creative liberty).

god works fast but i work faster for the bit

tierlist link

[mercrow]

The non-comprehensive review of most things i watched/played/read in 2024

Poor Things -- s'was fine, but not really my kind of subject matter

All Of Us Strangers -- 🥲

Hundreds Of Beavers -- Beavers! Many! Hundreds even!

Suzume No Tojimari -- this was basically the good version of children who chase lost voices

I Saw The TV Glow -- 😰

Promare -- I had no idea the vibes were this gay

Gozilla Minus One -- yeah it was competent, but i find myself a bit bored by the limitations of the kaiju film plot framework

Nightcrawler -- okay, okay, the acting and all but it's got only this one trick pony schtick that got a bit old eventually

3 Body Problem -- i thought the book had good adaptation potential since the character writing is so weak, but damn they went full melodrama on this and didn't improve anything else

A Killer Paradox -- okay execution of a fine idea with one scene that is so incredibly edited

Yuuki Bakuhatsu Bang Bravern -- what even. Bonkers.

Arcane S2 -- ohhh the misery

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Quantum Break -- ngl this is underrated, also please go read time knife

1000xResist -- outstanding game made by someone who doesn't even know how videogames work

Solar Ash -- speeeeeeders

Still Wakes The Deep -- okay, probably best in VR; this plank of wood does not need to be submerged in yellow i can see it pleasssse

Alan Wake 2 DLCs -- fire

Elden Ring -- played 200 hours. Am whelmed.

Mouthwashing -- i played this before it was cool

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Empire Of Silence | Christopher Ruocchio -- So much infodumping for being just dune and the protagonist is a bit bland for a book only about him

The Mars House | Natasha Pulley -- yes i did like it

The Spear Cuts Through Water | Simon Jimenez -- the author thinks his brain is huge, since he uses a 2nd person pov, unfortunately he's correct

The Darkness Outside Us | Eliot Schrefer -- i was losing my mind with how many things intensely annoyed me in this book and then the last third of it is so good that it evens out

The Warm Hands Of Ghosts | Katherine Arden -- not so much a coherent plot as a series of impeccably crafted poetic scenes with haunting atmosphere

[mercrow]

hymn to dionysus bingotime!

getting this in early so i can take wide swings. i did look for the papyrus font. ms paint didn't have it and that's tragic.

extra credit field: |_ the uk cover will suck _|

here's just the background in case anyone wants it for anything:

[mercrow]

in light of recent news

[mercrow]

it is such a massive gap in business strategy that every platform seems to underestimate how motivated people are to push something they liked onto everyone they know.

if i find something good on steam, i can usually foist that upon anyone whose username i know, but amazon, global book monopoly, can't figure out how to let people gift ebooks across different countries.

why can't i buy something like a ticket for a streaming show that lets me invite a set number of people to watch with me.

[mercrow]

film anti rec: I saw the TV glow

So. I pathologically procrastinate. As i am doing currently. So i wondered, unprompted, how it is kinda strange that the time i have until a deadline keeps getting less in a continuous fashion (i may have been tired). You keep getting dragged along the calendar, if you want or not, and that seems wrong somehow. Anyways, to cheer myself up, i thought i'd watch a movie. The one i keep hearing about from the people with taste.

For a good chunk of the runtime, i was a bit confused, because i thought this was horror, and none of it looked like it. Until it started to sink in. It's HORROR. This is undeniably a great film. And i don't recommend watching it. Unless you like pain. Permanent psychic damage. Going 10 points up on the depression evaluation test. Godspeed.

[mercrow]

Game Recs: Signalis

Do you ever finish a game and are disappointed that you understood the plot? It was too simple and straightforward? Well i got just the thing.

I finished this recently and was relieved there is after all hope for artistic endeavors out of germany. I was also delighted that finally, my directionless dabbling in foreign languages contributes to my enjoyment of something.

It's an indie survival horror title in a (aesthetically excellent) ps1 era retro style. You will inventory manage, run out of bullets, confront philosophical horrors beyond imagination, and solve puzzles.

The plot is not especially upfront about itself. It's not spoon-fed to the player, you will need to piece things together from found objects, journals and a few dialogues. And after you did that and got to the ending, you will have no idea what just happened. Some details are easier to understand than others, but for some there may well not be a single correct interpretation, like a dark and terrifying collection of visual poetry. For anyone who likes barely penetrable pieces of art to really chew away at, i highly recommend this.

curious side note: in the game radio broadcasts voiced in german pronounce 2 as "zwo" (instead of normal "zwei"). This is accurate to an official standard for radio communications, to easily tell it apart from 3 ("drei"). That is such an incredibly weird detail to get completely right, the devs scare me.

[mercrow]

I'm doing a thing where i do regular [read: reoccuring, with unpredictable frequency] posts about random media i liked/noticed/found interesting; with art/sketches/etc included.

Some of that will be more niche, some decently popular but not necessarily known outside of the specific genre space. Most of those, but not all, are recomendations.

tagged with "#mercrow media posts", should you want to mute that

other than that i do some art and posts about random things i find interesting.

also my own art is freely up for grabs for any non-commercial use, do with it what you like

[mercrow]

SYNOPSIS DROPPED

[mercrow]

I forgot I had this art blog whoops....Im reading the big bag wolf series by Charlie Adhara and I am obsessed so here's Cooper and Park 💕💕💕

[mercrow]

natasha pulley did not write "you were my family before any of them" or "I've missed you even when I didn't remember you" or "I cannot live any more counting the number of times I've seen you by the stars on your arm" or "I think you're the same thing in three different lights" or "come home, if you remember" for people to sleep on the kingdoms

[mercrow]

The central idea of the kingdoms is clearly how the eilean mor disappearances mystery can be explained by the presence of the black sails cast... no wait let me try this again.

It's how love transcends.

The world changes uncontrollably, shot wildly off any intended course by the smallest variation in trajectory. There is nothing safe to hold on to, nothing to rely on. You could be anyone, you could be anywhere. All solid foundations are sand coming apart in your fingers. But through the roiling waters lead fragile, ephemeral threads of human connection that can persist, through anything.

I've said this before, in some ways kingdoms is quite similar to nolan's interstellar (which i didn't actually like that much). The movie very explicitly proposes the idea that love may be more, more fundamental, a physical law and doubles down on this in the climax.

The other thing is, throughout the book you increasingly get the impression that whatever was in the past, too much has happened by now. The protagonists are different people, they have done things, others have died. You can't ever go back, the past reality is broken, connections shattered. You can't have back what you lost. But what if it's not hopeless, what if you try. There is always something left, even if it's hard to take hold off. Maybe you could pick up some of the pieces and assemble them into something familiar and new.

hello chat if you were writing a paper about Themes in certain novels, what would you say could be a specific theme you took away from The Kingdoms

[mercrow]

we are briefly passing through the no snail day. zero snails can be observed in this picture. we are beset by a moment of snaillessness.

[mercrow]

what time it is? snail time!

[mercrow]

A (very) free interpretation of the mars house chapter 6

So textually this would've had to be a angry 13 year old girl but i put the bear since that was the commonly used comparison for scary earthstrongers, but, while doing that, i also realized. The hotel has this cute playful bunch of petable polar bears that everyone just loves, right. And polar bear specifically is used so many times as the easily understandable baseline for big, scary, dangerous. This has to intentional, doesn't it (i am probably the only idiot who noticed this only now...)