#Corpus colossus

[intergalacticsouvenirs]

From Romans to Rectums: Thoughts on the Naming Convention in Mad Max

I think it’s fascinating how that meme about how often men think about the roman empire is materialized in the mad max world in different forms, but especially in their bastardized-latin naming convention. In my mind, it appears that post apocalyptic warlords were aware that modern society looked up to the roman empire, but they didn’t quite understand how the romans influenced us exactly. Nevertheless, the warlords (or their history men) did have access to niche knowledge such as ancient roman military strategy, enough to inspire the imperator and praetorian warrior position names. It’s as if the first history men did not keep any pre modern history on their skins, so they had to reduce the entire roman empire into fragments of ideals (for oral tradition). Such fragments of ideals would combine in weird ways to inspire these war-men to write the most beautifully grotesque poems that are their names.

In a world where words have more power, names are more than just biographical micro-poems, they are multi-used as tools as well. They could be guns pointed to your face like “People Eater” and “Toe-Cutter”, a quality seal of approval on a product like “Capable” and “Splendid”, an aggressive dog warning sign like “Furiosa” and “Mad Max”, and even a prayer amulet as in “Corpus Colossus”.

As a trend among warlords, a wacky wrestling stage name is a must for a strong branding. After all, the ferocious marketing of late capitalism and show business did not die with the atomic bomb, but rather thrived, mutated, and embraced nature, believe it or not. Darwin’s nature, not you tree-huggers’ nature.

The names of the two capable immortan brothers Rictus Erectus and Scabrous Scrotus reveal the real underlying obsession of all men: the penis. The penis is the axis mundi around which all revolves in the (mad max) world. But more than just about sex, the penis cult is about finding strength and courage in a hypermasculine god to mentally survive in a hypermasculine hell. In this context, the names of Immortan Joe's sons take on a deeper significance. Firstly, Rictus Erectus translates to something like grin and erection, as if Immortan Joe had hopped for a future full of pleasures for his son. It is also a very verbal wish for an offspring who can physically stand up by himself and for himself. Unlike his disabled brother Corpus Colossus, who received a magnificent name meaning body like a giant greek god statue, in fruitless hopes that his imperfections would also grow away. Scabrous Scrotus more explicitly describes a unique physical attribute, namely some scabby nuts. Scrotus could very well be a nickname, which would parallel ancient romans who would choose a cognomen (nickname) to be known by, like Caligula meaning “little boot”, Oedipus (greek) meaning “swollen foot”, and Verrucosus meaning “warty”, for example. Better would be if Joe had named his son after his own beat-up ballsack, in which case this ode to biological reproduction against the environment would be very on brand. I bet Darwin is grinning wide, in his coffin.

It is interesting to note that most people in the recent mad max world appear to be illiterate and uncultured, so most don’t even understand the meaning of these stupid Latin names, but just that they sound as important as they say they are. That means these men who have access to nuance are really “dressing up” for each other, like an internal joke with the bois. Three brothers named to sound like roman emperors, to rule over all the erected men, by his mighty phallus.

It goes to show how colossal and monumental… the roman empire was, that it would outlast even the best of modernity. And its shadow would still loom over humans like the mysterious milky way in the night sky.

It’s a shame that Miller’s hyper-poetry is not that accessible.

[tiffpixies]

I have so many nightmares

[lavenderuraniumglass]

Made a pikmin x MM:FR lockscreen!

🖤 [Like if you use] 🖤

[themummersfolly]

The Escape

“The men out there, they’re not like Vuvalini fathers. A girl to them is nothing but a body for them to use. But that’s their weakness- a weakness you can use. You let him get close, let him think he can use you at will. By the time he realizes he can’t, he’ll already be bleeding out at your feet.”

K.T. Concannon had said these words when Furiosa was eight. In the days that she’d been in the Citadel, they’d come back to her more and more.

Rictus was obsessed with her, she knew it now. By her two hundredth day in the Vault he was inventing reasons to visit, to stand too close behind her and touch her hair. On the day Aqua’s not-quite baby was born, she knew she needed to get out. She wasn’t sure how, or where she would go after, but she knew that Rictus was her key to escape.

“What do you mean, gone? Where is she?!” Immortan Joe stormed through the entrance to the Vault, his wives scattering before him. The Organic Mechanic turned from where he was putting his tools away.

“Easy, Boss, easy-”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

Organic raised his hands defensively as the warlord loomed over him. “This is the first I’ve been in here since the last birth. I come in to do the check-ups, and they’re saying she’s gone. That she’s been gone for two days.”

“Two days?!” Joe whirled on the nearest wife, a heavily pregnant woman who shrank behind Organic.

“We thought you had her,” she whimpered. “S-somebody came in the middle of the night, the night after the birth. We thought it was you-”

Joe slapped her open-handed, not hard enough to hurt the baby but enough to leave a bruised handprint. He whirled to face the Praetorians that had followed him in.

“It must’ve been him. He was out and about that night, and he’s been acting jumpy ever since.” Scrotus paced in the audience chamber. Outside in the halls, shouts and hurrying footsteps echoed as Joe’s Praetorians turned the Citadel upside down. Joe flexed his hands anxiously.

“Search it! Search every nook and cranny! Organic, stay here. If she’s hidden herself this long, she may be ill.” He seized the unfortunate woman by the hair and dragged her to her feet. “You know I did not come here that night. So tell me, who did?”

“I need to know which of my wives was complicit in this. Such treachery cannot be tolerated.”

“They weren’t complicit in anything, Dad.” Corpus Colossus fiddled with the control stick of his powered chair, causing the servos to buzz back and forth. “They hushed it up ‘cause they were afraid you’d go off on ‘em when you found out. Which you did.” Around the time the girl had arrived, Corpus’ opinion of his father’s breeding program had shifted from this is a bad idea to this is worse than I could have thought possible. Had he not been fighting a serious illness at the time, he would have spoken out at length against inducting her.

Scrotus scowled. “How did he get in and out with her if one of them wasn’t helping him? Someone has to pay!”

Rictus sat hunched over in a chair before his father and two brothers. It had taken almost half an hour to find him; when the search for the girl had started, he had tried to hide in the back of one of the store rooms.

“Rictus is a big boy,” Corpus shot back. He can get in trouble all by himself.” He turned to their father. “We need to get his side of this. You know how he is about dolls, and he’s always following the new war pups around. He may be able to tell us where she is.”

“Tell me the truth, Rictus. I won’t be angry.” Joe’s voice was as gentle as it ever got. “Did you enter my Vault two nights ago?”

“No.” Rictus stared miserably at the floor.

“They heard footsteps, someone big. If it wasn’t Dad and it wasn’t you, then who was it?” Scrotus demanded.

“I dunno!”

“Think.” Joe leaned forward, held out his hands. “You were awake at the time, many people saw you. Did you see anyone near the Vault?”

“No! Maybe- maybe it was him!” He pointed to Scrotus, who clapped a hand over his face.

“Rictus! This is serious!” Corpus snapped. “They’re searching your room as we speak. What are we gonna find in there?”

Rictus looked up in alarm. “You’re not gonna let ‘em touch my stuff? Dad, you’re not gonna let ‘em touch my stuff, are you?”

At that moment, one of the Praetorians entered.

“Sir. We found these. They were sitting out in the open in his room.”

In one hand he held a chastity belt, adjusted all the way down, the fasteners cut. In the other hand he held Rictus’ personalized bolt cutters.

Scrotus was the first to find his voice.

“What the fuck did you do?!”

“Scrotus! Shut it!” Corpus yelled. Rictus had contracted in on himself so hard he seemed to be trying to disappear into his own chest cavity.

“Enough!” Everyone fell silent at Joe’s roar. The warlord leaned forward again. “Rictus, my son. You will feel better if you tell me the truth.”

The big man’s lip wobbled. “It wasn’t my fault! I just wanted to see what it felt like. And then her hair came off, and-”

“Wait. Her hair?” Corpus rolled forward a few inches.

“Yeah! It just fell off in my hand, all of it! And then she ran off, and I couldn’t find her. I tried, Dad, I really tried!”

“Rictus.” Corpus craned his neck to meet his brother’s eye. “Where’s the hair that fell off?”

“Uhhhh…”

Joe closed his eyes in dismay. Scrotus threw up his hands.

“You believe me, right Dad? Dad?”

“Fuck’s sake!” Scrotus snapped. “We all know what you did. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“I didn’t do anything to her!”

“Yes you did, you stupid pumpkin head, just like you did to the girl Uncle gave you, you can never keep-”

“That’s enough!” Joe shouted. Rictus, who had started to come out of his chair, promptly sat back down. “Scrotus, go help with the search.”

“But-”

“You will be more helpful assisting with the search, my son. Go.”

Scrotus groaned, but did as he was told. The Praetorian followed him out. Corpus sighed.

“Why’d you do it, Rictus? You knew better.”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“I’m disappointed in you, my son.” Joe took Rictus’ hands in his. “You may no longer go into my Vault.”

“But- when the new baby-”

“Even when the new baby is born. You may keep Corpus company instead. If your new brother is born safely, we will introduce you afterwards.” Joe stood up and turned away. Rictus stared after him, tears in his eyes.

“But Dad, I didn’t do anything!”

“C’mon, Rictus,” Corpus puffed gently. “You need to tell us where you put her.”

“She ran away from me, I don’t know where she is!”

“Come on. Walk me through it, every step of the way, and we’ll find where she is.”

“That character over in Gastown won’t be happy.” The People Eater picked his teeth with a carved bone toothpick. “He was rather fond of her, whatever she was to him.”

Rictus sniffled and got up to follow his brother’s chair. “Ok.”

Night had fallen, and the Immortan sat with his inner circle around the remains of their dinner. Corpus and Rictus were still out, trying to retrace Rictus’ steps in a way that made sense. Scrotus scratched pensively at a rash.

“What are we going to tell him?”

The People Eater chortled. “Not the truth, certainly! That’d be dropping a lit match onto relations!”

“He won’t come after her.” Joe sat back to allow a war pup to remove his plate. “Not after she turned on him. He doesn’t seem the type. But we must not allow word to get out. If it becomes known that one of my wives vanished from the security of the Vault, it will significantly cut down on willing candidates. It’s difficult enough now to convince someone to sell me a healthy full-life.”

Footsteps sounded in the entryway and they all looked up. A Praetorian stepped aside to let the Organic Mechanic pass. Joe perked up.

“Anything?”

“’Fraid not. Corpus is starting to think he just chucked her off a gantry when no one was looking. The Wretched wouldn’t have left a lot to know her by.”

A collective groan went up from the table. Joe shut his eyes.

“A healthy full-life on the verge of her child-bearing years.”

“Ah, if I may?” Organic offered. “You might not have had much luck with her anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Scrotus demanded.

“Well- you know I been with her a long time, I’ve seen her grow from a pup herself. And she’s been healthy the whole way through, eating regular, no hard labor, never had a fever. And I do exams on the regular, make sure all the breeders are in good shape and healthy-”

“I’m aware,” said Joe. “What is your point?”

“My point is- most healthy full-lives at her age have started to menstruate, or are showing signs they will soon.”

“They’re doing what?” Scrotus wanted to know.

“Menstruate. You know, bleed from the crotchal regions. That’s how you know they’re ready- I mean, depending on who you ask, there’s different schools of thought. But I keep tabs on her, I keep tabs on all of ‘em, and she’s never bled. And not just that. She’s got no tits, no pubes-”

“Truly you are a paragon of good taste, Organic.” The People Eater made a disgusted face. Organic turned on him, arms akimbo.

“Speak for yourself, Fatso-”

Joe cut them off. “Are you telling me that she was not, in fact, likely to be fertile?”

“I mean, can’t tell unless we open her up, and we’re not likely to get that chance. But yeah, you probably wouldn’t even get a mutant out of her, much less a son. You really didn’t lose that much.”

Joe sat back, massaging his temples.

“I need to find a way to keep Rictus busy. He’s been getting in too much trouble lately.”

“You need to figure out what you’re going to tell Gastown, too, if they ask.” The People Eater wiped his toothpick clean on his suit and tucked it into its case. Organic shrugged.

“Just tell ‘em she got sick. It happens. She got sick, it was real fast, nothing we could do. Happens all the time.”

“Even to one of my wives?”

“Has Dementus ever seen the inside of your Vault?” Organic countered. Joe nodded thoughtfully.

“Good enough. Thank you, Organic, you’re dismissed. Scrotus, I need you to find something to put Rictus in charge of. He has too much free time.”

“Me? What’s he gonna be in charge of, he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel!”

“Something simple but time consuming. Scouting runs, perhaps. He’s a good enough fighter that I won’t worry.” He turned to the People Eater. “When does my war rig leave for Gastown next?”

“Seven days.”

Whether or not Dementus believed the Immortan’s story was difficult to say. He was dealing with the fallout from yet another clash between his bikers and the Gastowners, and doing it without the help of his most trusted underboss, who was, he explained, “on walkabout.” The questions asked about the little girl’s demise had been few.

“Then in seven days I will send my regrets to Dementus that the girl he brought me has died of an illness. An unfortunate episode, but one that need do no lasting harm.”

The same story was spread in the Citadel by stone-faced Praetorians in response to anyone asking what that ruckus had been about. But quietly, a different story made the rounds, whispered from war pup to blackthumb, circulating at night through the lice-ridden huddles where the treadmill fodder slept.

Vanished, right out from under his nose.

One of the brothers what did it, I heard. Hid her body in the hydroponics.

Wonder who’s next. Might be cushy, but I’d sell me girl to the maggot farmer ‘fore I sold her up there, if she was alive.

Huddled in the back, a scrawny, mute child listened to the speculation and, comforted, drifted off to sleep.

Like what I'm doing? Buy me a coffee!

[rig-a-rendal]

went to go see mad max and it was good for what it is (a character study/expository prequel) but mostly YAYYYYYY my guy is back

[themummersfolly]

Headcanon accepted.

This goes against my headcanons on birth order but like what if joe’s sons got their crappy names bc of corpus 

 like imagine corpus colossus, as a precocious 11 year old who’s too smart for his own good (in the sense of smart arse as well as regular smart), who feels replaceable because of the attention his dad puts on hypothetical babies who keep dropping like flies 

 but he would NEVER admit he feels unloved or anything like expressing feelings?? what?? so he takes it out by giving them ridiculous names like…

Keep reading

[dustyisforever]

A Shadow of the Colossus Review

by DustyIsForever This is a review. It's about a video game, which is a kind of movie you watch with your hands.

In 2012, Shadow of the Colossus became the first thing I ever saved money to buy. After watching the “Nerd³ Plays” video where he calls it a “perfect game,” I began to daydream about it obsessively. I stuck the facetious label “Ye Olde Jar o Talents” on a mason jar and brought it to school so I could beg my classmates for funds. This worked, however incredulous it was, but I didn’t buy the game. I didn’t buy the game for years, and even after that I didn’t play it for at least a few months. It was like an old Russian novel to me: something that always existed in the future for which I could never consider myself prepared. And then I did play it and it was great.

You can either read it here or on a published Docs page. But be careful. It's pretty long.

This is a review of Shadow of the Colossus. It will contain spoilers. I first played the game a long time ago, but I went back to it a few times over the years. Recently I watched a close friend play it. We had some conversations about it. Soon, I’d like to see my wife play it as well. She can’t read this review yet because she is, incredibly, going to be playing totally blind. You can imagine how rare it is to play something like Shadow of the Colossus without knowing anything about it beforehand.

As I promised not long ago, I'm going to start writing essay-reviews of many games I enjoy. But first, I'd like to elaborate on my method. I have a particular framework for expressing my opinions of these games that I've developed as an alternative to a 10/10, 5/5, 40/40, 100/100, or other numerical art goodness judgment system. The aim is to provide the foolish satisfaction of a number score while cutting back on its pitfalls and biases. Number scores are unhelpful. In a 10/10 system, one finds that a 10 means that the reviewer idolizes the work, a 9, 8, or even a 7 can mean that they enjoyed it, and anything below that might mean that they disliked it, hated it, thought it was tedious, or simply misunderstood it. Opinions don’t fit neatly on a graduated, linear scale. Our value judgments are relative, as in: I liked this more than that; never absolute in the way numbers would suggest. We know this but pretend otherwise. How fun to bestow a cherished piece of art the honor of your perfect number! We're all pleased to think that our opinion is intelligent. My goal is to indulge that, but with restraint.

The first principle of my system is that I only bother rating games that I already know I love. Though there is surely as much to be learned from "bad" art as "good" art, I want to avoid negativity. Also, I find it’s easier to assign a score with restraint and thoughtfulness when a bad score isn't in consideration at all. It also means that I, as a critic, produce fewer reviews overall, which should make each review more characteristic and the overall corpus more consistent.

My second principle is that the highest number I'll use is three. Mr. Ebert was onto something when he made the alluring choice of knocking the tail off of the five-star format. It made all of his ratings look smarter. Five stars was for the common people; real intellectuals expressed their taste in the glamorous new fashion of four. Now it's my turn. I've one-upped the fallen old man, who once failed to appreciate John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). I dare to fly with merely three. And no halfsies, either. No point to it if I’m going to decide to give a game a one-and-a-half because that would be a six-point system in disguise, wouldn’t it?

My final principle is borrowed in part from Famitsu's thing where they divide scores into parts that can be treated either separately or summed. They do that with four reviewers. In my case, I cannot judge the work from the perspective of multiple people (I am only one person). Instead, I split my score into two numbers representing two priorities. That’s two numbers ranging zero to three, written X-Y. For instance, Shadow of the Colossus is a 1-2 game.

The first number, on a scale of zero to three, represents the aesthetic merits of the game. This can include everything experienced by the player. It may consider the art direction, the sound and music, and the narrative design. It also may refer to the dynamics of the design and the "choreography" of interaction, in a very formalist sense borrowed in part from Graeme Kirkpatrick's Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game. Interactive design is just as much a part of the media content of a game as the audiovisual presentation.

To be less academic—I like to summarize the first number as the question: "does it make me cry?" because it captures that it's often a sentimental thing. High-scoring games on the first number tend to be tearjerkers.

Why should Shadow of the Colossus get a one out of three in this category? Well, a one isn't really a low score in the conventional sense. My system is built to specify why a game is great. A zero would mean "this game is great, but it has nothing to do with the aesthetics." I consider Shadow of the Colossus to be aesthetically great, just not as aesthetically great as a few other games.

I like to call the other score “does it blow my mind?” to highlight that it pertains to games that impress me. Expect more elaboration when I get to the second half of the review.

When I first made up this system years ago, I tried to list a bunch of old favorites as examples. At that time, I stamped a 2-1 on Shadow of the Colossus. Mark the difference! It means that now I appreciate its technical achievement more but have tempered my feelings about its content. This change of opinion came to me when I recently watched a close friend play through the game for the first time, hanging out over her shoulder. The banter we shared dampened the emotion of the experience—for example, she already knew Agro was going to fall off a cliff sooner or later and by the time she did, it affected her more like the punchline to a drawn-out joke. I was a little offended. Her more detached play experience exposed some of the game’s weaknesses to me.

In 2012, Shadow of the Colossus became the first thing I ever saved money to buy. After watching the “Nerd³ Plays” video where he calls it a “perfect game,” I began to daydream about it obsessively. I stuck the facetious label “Ye Olde Jar o Talents” on a mason jar and brought it to school so I could beg my classmates for funds. This worked, however incredulous it was, but I didn’t buy the game. I didn’t buy the game for years, and even after that I didn’t play it for at least a few months. It was like an old Russian novel to me: something that always existed in the future for which I could never consider myself prepared. And then I did play it and it was great.

My original rating of two reflected the beautiful score and the sublime desolation of the game, which inhabited me then as it does now. When I take a walk in the woods, I am visited once more by the mystery of “To the Ancient Land.” It’s a good season in my life to return to the game. I’m in a forest often.

But unrelated to my time in forests, I’ve spent the last year thinking a lot about fantasy. I fell out with it some years ago and only recently began rehabilitating my affection for it. Shadow of the Colossus belongs to that estranged clade of fantasy, the fairy tale, which has become my favorite.

Fairy tales are mysterious but well-patterned, made from a pool of common morphologies, which folklorist Vladimir Propp called “functions” with perhaps excessive precision. A glancing comparison will hopefully show how much like a fairy tale Shadow of the Colossus really is. Propp’s functions came originally from his syntax of Russian folk stories. Shadow of the Colossus is neither Russian nor folk, through it deploys several such functions in an identifiable and properly consecutive fashion:

Absentation, interdiction, and violation all before the prologue is over

Trickery as Dormin tells Wander what must be done to revive Mono

Departure, as Wander begins the quest to slay the colossi, and various functions of the Donor, who is also Dormin

Quite a bit of struggle and branding as Wander does his colossus-slaying and dishevels himself gradually with dark magic

Pursuit (by Lord Emon)

And then the punishment and reward are cleverly reversed, because of course in this special video game that people who don’t call all video games art sometimes deign to call art, Wander was in error all along.

I think that to leave the analysis at that would be a failure to appreciate the particular flavor of this story. There are many video game stories where the player character ends up ethically compromised for some narrative effect, but the aesthetic appeal of Shadow of the Colossus is grossly different from, say, Spec Ops: the Line. Wander is more like Hamlet; he retains his hero-ness the whole way through, yet still the fate of his quest is doomed by circumstance.

What he must do is awful and painful to him, but he’s stuck on this path. The closing of the door to the bridge out of the Forbidden Lands is a literalization of this. The inciting events of his journey—the superstitious sacrifice of an innocent girl—make his goals noble from the start, and because he does not have the information to understand the cost of his deeds until it is too late, we cannot say that he is ever malicious. The player is clued in that something is wrong through visual suggestions that Wander does not necessarily see or understand, including the doves and ominous shadow-people which gather at the Shrine of Worship. These devices are not employed in any way that comments specifically on the medium of video games; nothing about them is procedural. They are very conventional vectors of good old-fashioned dramatic irony.

Furthermore, we don’t textually know at all that Dormin is evil. The antagonist Lord Emon who opposes Dormin and Wander is possibly responsible for Mono’s death. He reminds us, if we have played ICO, of the people who unjustly imprison that game’s hero on account of his “cursed” horns. Once we abandon the idea that the Lord Emon narrator/antagonist character is a trustworthy authority, we lose the only voice telling us that Dormin is dangerous. And at the end of the tale Dormin, surprisingly, keeps all of his promises to Wander: Mono is revived and Wander’s body is returned to him. He even gets his horsey back! Very sweet. And the final scenes, which play out leisurely beside the scrolling credits column, show a bright and sun-dappled garden. Mono, robed in her white gown, comforts baby Wander while surrounded by wildlife and green trees. A fawn appears. The imagery is positively lousy with symbols of innocence and spring.

And, if we’re going to permit ourselves to get biblical, isn’t it a little like a reverse Genesis? Wander follows the instructions of a higher power despite a warning from Lord Emon, who has special knowledge. As a result, a woman is saved from her “cursed fate” and the only way out is permanently closed, trapping the woman and the revived hero in the garden of paradise.

Shadow of the Colossus tells a tragic and subversive story, but it does it entirely within the syntax of its folktalesy story genre. It doesn’t have the flavor of subversiveness which comments on other works or the conventions of its own medium. To understand Undertale’s project, you need to be familiar with other JRPGs. Shadow of the Colossus would preserve its message in any medium.

This point isn’t really doing anything to bump my score up or down, but it’s a line of thinking I’ve revisited many times while writing about this game. I think that what really took Shadow of the Colossus from a two down to a one was the inconsistency between encounter designs.

My friend caught on quickly to the first several colossi, even prevailing where I remember having stumbled (my younger self was completely stymied by the sixth, called “Barba” by fans). But as the latter half of the game wore on, she spent more and more time running in circles. Numbers nine, eleven, and twelve all exasperated her. Each of them involves a special trick that must be discovered before they can be made vulnerable. Colossus number eleven, for example, is covered in armor that can only be broken by using a torch to chase it off of a cliff. But no other encounter shows you that there’s anything you can hold in your hands besides the sword and bow you start with. To even get the torch, you need to stand on a plinth holding up a brazier such that the colossus charges at you and knocks the torch loose. But my friend did not even realize that the plinths were climbable; they can only be grabbed from the sides, which is difficult to see and execute when you’re constantly charged at by an enemy that stuns you on the ground for a few whole seconds whenever it hits you. The tedium was too much, and the game lost its magic and atmosphere. The battle against the last colossus was pretty disheartening. No sense of an emotional climax came through. Instead, as I watched my friend fall over and over from its hands and shoulders and whatnot with all the tenacity of a lint-covered novelty sticky hand, I could only hope desperately that she wouldn’t put the game down right then and there.

In some moments, it’s plain to see that Shadow of the Colossus is testing the player’s patience with purpose and meaning. Each encounter culminates with Wander clutching to fur, often on the head of the colossus, holding on just long enough to get a good stab. The colossi shake and Wander dangles on, unable to get a steady hit. It’s frustrating to have to wait for a tiny window of opportunity to land a blow, but this is clearly by design. If the fight could be ended as soon as the player got into stabbing position, the anticipation would resolve too quickly. Giving the player sweaty palms, making them really clench the trigger button, serves to procedurally convey the ordeal Wander faces on-screen. You hold on (to the controller) to hold on (for dear life) in a very successful bit of hand-to-screen parallelism.

But at other times, the game slips away into pointless futility. In many fights, the trick that makes the colossus vulnerable is only effective for a short time, so the player must hurry to seize the opportunity. Often, the time window just isn’t long enough, and the player is compelled to retry, but the novelty of discovering the trick has already disappeared. The ninth colossus’s arena is huge, and when you knock it onto its side, you have to maneuver over to the far side of its body every time. It’s fiddly and protracted, and it’s a case where the game inadequately reacts to the player executing on what should feel like the turning point of the battle. It took my friend about four tries to ascend this colossus successfully. And it’s a turtle, so it isn’t even that tall. Really lame.

My own remembered experience, rooted in some British guy’s twelve-year-old YouTube video, is very different from the one shared with that friend of mine. I saw a game denuded of its majesty by our ongoing joke that Agro would be the final boss; a joke between pals on the proverbial gamer couch. A couch that, if it were not replaced in our case by the deep phenomenological chasm of several US states of distance and a Discord RTC, would be evocative of the one shared by Misters Cheadle and Sandler in the film Reign Over Me.

It’s a largely forgotten film, but consensus says it’s surprisingly well-regarded: Metacritic awards it an impressive 8.5 user score, which it labels “universal acclaim.” Adam Sandler plays a traumatized man who, after losing his family in 9/11, quits his dental career and whittles his days scootering around, playing the drums, and remodeling his kitchen over and over. Don Cheadle is his former college roommate, a successful dentist with a family, who runs into him late one night. The two rekindle their friendship and are both healed for it. This involves a lot of Shadow of the Colossus.

When Don Cheadle first sees Sandler, he can’t get him to stop and talk. Their second encounter happens when Cheadle drops off his daughter at a friend’s house. He intends to go back home to his wife to spend quality time solving a puzzle with her. Suddenly, Sandler flies by on his scooter. So instead, Cheadle gets him to stop and talk. He asks if Sandler is “practicing,” by which he means “practicing dentistry.”

“I’m practicing all the time, up in the valley. Took down twelve of the colossus so far” “The valley? What is that, is that a medical complex or something?” “It’s more… like another dimension. You take a journey, you discover yourself.” (Reign Over Me, 13:50)

He gets Sandler to sit down for Starbucks, where Sandler violates assorted social norms as per a 2007 movie’s notion of a traumatized person. Sandler acts as if he doesn’t remember Cheadle but they make conversation regardless and before you know it, Cheadle is at this guy’s apartment.

Cheadle needs to use the bathroom. Sad music begins to play. Cheadle briefly glimpses a room with furniture covered in sheets—evidence that this man once had a family. Then there’s a mournful-looking shot where the camera stares straight down Sandler’s darkened hall and distantly we see his TV. He’s climbing the first Colossus. That’s a funny thing to do if you’ve finished three quarters of the game. I guess he has more than one save file. So that he can practice more, of course.

As the movie goes on, the two intertwine into each other’s life in a conventionally dramatic way. Sandler is a broken man who throws tantrums and lacks responsibility and ropes Cheadle into a Mel Brooks marathon showing on the night Cheadle’s father dies, and in turn, Cheadle suffers various embarrassments to his career and family because he has compassion for his friend. And sometimes we get to see more Shadow of the Colossus, which Sandler often calls “Shadows” of the Colossus.

In its second appearance, Sandler is fighting the fifth Colossus—my favorite—and Cheadle takes the controller. We get a montage. He can’t put it down. Sandler teases Cheadle, he says he’s addicted (to Shadow of the Colossus). Cheadle jumps to his feet, paces around the couch in frustration: he demands one more try. He refuses Sandler’s suggestion to stop and “let it soak in,” he’s determined to get it this time. Number fifteen falls and Cheadle pumps his fist, shouting “co-lo-ssussss!” in a funny voice. The montage ends, and with it goes our brief window into an otherworld where playing Shadow of the Colossus actually looks like that.

Or, hey, that’s not so fair. Maybe, for Mr. Adam Sandler, playing Shadow of the Colossus is about practicing each fight over and over and pumping your fist triumphantly when you finally win. Maybe he got a New Game Plus save file when he picked it up on eBay that let him fight the colossi out of order. For his character—who, as I’ve neglected to mention, is named Charlie Fineman—the game is supposed to be a metaphor for 9/11, of course.

Back in ‘07, Kotaku managed to get in touch with Jeremy Roush, who worked as an editor for Reign Over Me. Apparently, the role of Shadow of the Colossus in the film was inspired by Roush’s father.

The Vietnam War left his father 100 percent mentally disabled with post-traumatic stress disorder... Unable to work, he spent the days and evenings watching sci-fi thriller Aliens over and over again until he actually had to buy a new VHS tape. "Aliens is a thinly veiled kind of Vietnam veteran kind of story," Roush explains, "and watching it is a way of thinking about it without telling yourself you are thinking about it." The movie was visceral therapy for his father… Refusing to accept the death of loved ones. Seeking out an escape from that truth. Giants falling in slow motion. "You could see where someone who was dealing with 9/11 would be engrossed by a giant that keeps collapsing over and over again," he says. Charlie's therapy was Shadow of the Colossus. (Ashcraft p.2)

Roush, who was responsible for the idea to include the game in the movie, had thought seriously about the thematics. In Reign Over Me, Charlie Fineman’s fixation on Shadow of the Colossus is a deliberate symbol of his grief, boxed into a safe and distant replica of tragedy which he can watch himself overcome again and again on the plasma TV.

Later on in the film, Cheadle manages to drag Sandler to weekly therapist sessions, but they go nowhere. Sandler refuses to speak about his family and leaves each session after just a few minutes. But he does say “I like to play Colossus!” (Reign, 1:13:29). In this movie’s understanding of mentally ill people, or at least in Roush’s, PTSD sufferers seek out proxy-triggers to act out the procedure of grieving with none of the pain. I think that I preferred the movie before I learned this. It just doesn’t make as much sense to say that the colossi are all supposed to be, like, the twin towers. Isn’t that bizarre? I mean, I had just assumed that the game was more broadly supposed to be a parallel to the ordeal of overcoming grief, and that the colossi were the grief. Grief is like a colossus, or like colossi, because it can feel so much bigger than the griever, so invincible and enduring. That’s why it was so strange to me that he never makes it further through the game over the course of the movie. In the very last scene, when he’s in his new and well-lit apartment, do you know what he’s doing? He’s playing it again, but he’s back to number thirteen. I really expected him to finish the game by the end, which would parallelize his grief struggle with a struggle to take down the colossi. It would represent something. However, the truth is that the colossus encounters are supposed to be 9/11, and he’s mentally recreating a facsimile of 9/11 every time he plays the game. Infinite, furry World Trade Centers getting stabbed by Adam Sandler over and over.

Sorry, that might have been a digression in poor taste. You didn’t expect to read a review of Reign Over Me within this review of Shadow of the Colossus and it was a little deceptive of me to jam it in there. But I thought about it so much, you have to understand! It’s fascinating to me how I could arrive at such a different interpretation of the movie than was apparently intended. The same difference goes for the game itself: Mr. Roush definitely got the gist of Shadow of the Colossus, but he applied the game to the movie in such a different way than I would have.

Let’s talk about the technical side of things instead for a short while. A nice palate-cleanser. It might seem unbalanced to devote one half of the score system to technology that is seldom appreciated by the audience—this score is more than that. Perhaps you were left confused when I didn’t explain it in much detail earlier, back when I was still laying out the way the system works. The slogan “does it blow my mind?” suggests that this category seeks to appreciate the craft of game development. A good example of something non-technological that “blows my mind” would be the dialogue system in Hades; the incredible effort of writing such a massive script and then organizing it so cleverly certainly does blow my mind, speaking as a game developer and a very slow writer.

Shadow of the Colossus is an exceptionally technically impressive game that deserves more than the 1 I assigned it on the spot so long ago. Through optimization, fakery, and creativity, it packs in the most sophisticated graphics the PlayStation 2 can handle, including HDR lighting, self-shading, long-distance level-of-detail mesh transitions, real-time fur rendering, volumetric particles, and anisotropic light scattering. Most of these practices were considered next-gen at the time of the game’s release. Some of them still feel shiny and new in 2024.

Team ICO accomplished this through ingenuity and strict scoping. Out of any of my sources, I learned the most about it here. Of particular interest to me is the usage of procedural animation and inverse kinematics, of which I’m a big fan. If you are one of the few beautiful souls in this loving universe who have read my blog(s) before, you know that I’ve been working on and off for a long time on a project that relies heavily on inverse kinematics called Flower Pot. The inexpensive algorithm I use in my own work, called FABRIK, was not published until 2011. Furthermore, Shadow of the Colossus has very complex character models and needs to clearly telegraph the movements of the player character and the colossi. For this reason it also dynamically combines animation data keyframed by an animator with the movements computed by the inverse kinematics algorithms. They did this on a CPU that clocked at about 294 megahertz (see Diefendorff).

I won’t reproduce diagrams here because they’re already available in the translated article on Léna Piquet’s website, which I linked above and which may also be found in my sources. To be honest, there is less for me to write in this section of the review because there is not much new to say. The achievements and process of Team ICO have been extensively documented and explained, much more than almost any other game. What is especially unique about Shadow of the Colossus is that much of this dissection and documentation has been done by outsiders: fans who never had access to the team or their materials.

Of particular note is Nomad Colossus. I found a Fandom wiki article about this guy. It says, “Nomad Colossus is a well-known figure in The Shadow of The Colossus community. He's most well-known for his insane dedication to the game and downright jaw-dropping data-mining” (Team Ico Wiki). Passionate! But the article has no comments. Yet on the other hand, a skim of the community message log page shows that at least a dozen users have worked on this wiki within the last several months. A tantalizing window into a community, or one of a million lost corners of the internet? I cannot rightfully say.

Nomad Colossus uploaded their first Shadow of the Colossus-related YouTube video in April of 2010, four and a half years post-release. It’s been much longer than that since Breath of the Wild came out and I’m still surprised whenever I see someone running it in an emulator. The video is titled “Shadow of the Colossus - Through the entrance,” and it shows Wander on horseback in an area normally inaccessible except in cutscenes: the north bridge into the central shrine. He rides Agro through the narrow gate passage on the other end of the bridge. The path continues into a void for a long ways, but the horse stops as if running into a wall.

Since then, Nomad Colossus has published 346 videos (if I’m counting correctly) pertaining to Shadow of the Colossus, prying at it with camera hacks, model viewers, and data manipulation. He reveals mountains and plains and islands and ruins all inaccessible in normal play. Their work, comprising so many short, uncommentated videos, can be engaged with as a companion book to the game; Nomad gradually turns the elusive horizons of the Forbidden Lands back into data, into geometry stored in a file system. Numbers on computers permit no mysteries. A number is autological; before being applied to another end it represents only itself. A number is atomic, it has no secret compartments. Through the efforts of explorers like Nomad Colossus and their emulators, no pit has been left unaccounted for on the DVD-ROM. Nomad renders Shadow of the Colossus into a wholly unmysterious object. This is not a criticism of their work.

At the same time, the game continues to support an incredible abundance of perceived mystery. After all, this was why Nomad Colossus’s work began. The so-called Secret Seekers and their famous thread on the PSN forums were dedicated to unearthing what they imagined to be the mother-of-all easter eggs. They began with intense clue-hunting and then moved on to the less speculative arts of boundary breaking and data mining, albeit after dozens of pages of effusive discussion. The intentions behind the game’s design were a favorite topic. Their style of discourse was dense with wild, associative connections; the possibility of subtextual hints by means of biblical allusion was on the table before even the end of the first post (Quest for the Last Big Secret). “Fumito Ueda is infamous for his attention to the most minute, intricate detail,” this post says. But to say he is infamous for this—does that not suggest the consensus of many people? I suspect that the Ueda these individuals imagined was not an accurate model of the real one. There was no secret last colossus, after all.

These are only a few of many voices on the internet professing all kinds of opinions about the game, its content, its intentions and meanings and forms. A quick survey will show substantial diversity of interpretation: I found a passionate review on the “patientgamers” subreddit decrying Shadow of the Colossus as “one of the worst games I’ve ever played” for its “non-existent story” and “Genuinely awful clunky movement and controls” (AstraFuckingGooGoo). In “Shadow of the Colossus: a Retrospective View,” NoobFeed user BrunoBRS calls the game “a love story, of what limits can a man go for his loved one, but it is, most importantly, the tale of David and Goliath” in a passage of lavish praise for “what he truly believes is the greatest game of all time” (BrunoBRS). The similarly-titled “Shadow of the Colossus: A Retrospective,” an article on The Boss Key, calls it “a game all about and only about killing the boss monsters as a means to an end” (Koop). “Shadow of the Colossus Retrospective– A Tragically Beautiful Love Story,” brought to us by Taylor Lyles on DualShockers, says it’s “so much more than just a boss rush game; it is the story of a boy who cared so much for someone he loved that unleashed all sorts of hellish things to save her” (Lyles). Shadow of the Colossus retrospectives are, as they say, like assholes: everybody has one. I am included. Shades of consensus and contradiction are to be found in abundance in each discussion of the game.

And what of my own opinions? They depend on a perceived counter-opinion in many ways. My revised scoring suggests how I remember my past self. In my discussion of the aesthetic content of the game, I call for a new perspective that de-emphasizes the notion that Shadow of the Colossus deliberately works to subvert a convention of the medium of video games. But couldn’t I be accused of failing to establish that this notion existed in the first place? Let me provide an example of that notion, at least. Here’s another retrospective. It has the word “retrospective” in its title. It’s called “START/SELECT: Consuming Loneliness: A ‘Shadow of the Colossus’ Retrospective,” and it was written by Mac Riga for the Georgetown University student newspaper. Here’s Riga’s take:

Team Ico sought to make a game that laid bare the contradiction of video games. It held up this beautiful medium, the pinnacle of self-isolation and escapism yet one that fosters empathy and self-reflection more than any other, and begged the player to wrestle with that irony — to come to their own conclusions about what it means to be alone, what it means to consume video games and what it means to do both simultaneously. (Riga)

This is surprising. Riga isn’t talking about the moral irony of monster-slaying in video games, which is more or less the topic of the counter-opinion I imagined myself to be opposing. But he is saying that Shadow of the Colossus is trying to engage in conversation with a convention of the medium of games, and to me that was the important part. For Riga, it’s a game about “self-isolation” and “empathy.”

Maybe it would be helpful to check what Fumito Ueda has to say. Even if you’re the type to faithfully invoke The Death of the Author, you might still agree, I hope, that discovering the designer’s intent will provide a reference against which to compare other views.

“I’ve never thought that “cruelty” is something forbidden in video games. Video games seem to require cruelty as a means of expression, and that being the case, I wanted to try and present my own take on cruelty. That was really the seed idea of Shadow of the Colossus.” (Ueda)

Here in a 2005 interview with CONTINUE magazine, Ueda casts Shadow of the Colossus as a game about cruelty inspired by the cruelty he sees as required in games. My analysis is thrown into doubt even further! It was intended as a deconstruction all along. But wait—Fumito Ueda from 2019 might be here to save me.

Was the overall aim of SOTC to question why it is that most games are about killing and how we have grown so comfortable doing so in a virtual existence? Fumito Ueda: I play games where violence is a factor myself, so I do not dismiss such games. However, through the production of Shadow of the Colossus, I started having doubts about simply “feeling good by beating monsters” and “getting a sense of accomplishment”. I tried thinking if there were any other choices for different kinds of expression, then ended up with such settings and rules as a result. Rather than try to deliberately create some sort of antithesis, I focused more on the consistency of the design as a product and differentiation (from other products). (Taylor)

Apologies for another long block quote; I really think the context is worth leaving in here because it helps to illustrate that, while Ueda is not exactly contradicting himself, different circumstances have prompted two answers with very different implications. The interviewer in the latter source seems to be aligned with the popular view that the game narrative is chiefly an exploration of morality. Which I do not disagree with, either: I should reiterate that my disagreement is with the view that the game narrative is specifically an exploration of morality in the medium of video games. The interviewer suggests that by saying that “most games are about killing.” Ueda seems to dismiss the idea by going on to say that the game was not crafted as “some sort of antithesis,” but that those themes emerged simply by trying to make a unique story. But in the former interview, Ueda asserts that he was “inspired” by the prevalence of “cruelty” in games. We are deprived of an authorial view where we might find stability; such a thing would have protected us, maybe, from the wild menagerie of contrasting views we face instead.

And could it be possible, if you would excuse the sudden break, that Reign Over Me (2007) starring Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle might not have always been actively trying to frame Shadow of the Colossus as a pseudo-Freudian stand-in for 9/11? More importantly, do we have any meaningful way to be sure? No, I think it’s more likely that suggestive forces have moved in with us permanently and that their furniture is too numerous and heavy for us to kick them out. It is impossible to speak on the aesthetics of a work, especially one so widely critiqued as Shadow of the Colossus, without necessarily speaking on what was spoken before. It is impossible to even play the game without encountering these extratextual conversations.

When I watched my friend play Shadow of the Colossus for the first time, I must have already been faintly aware of this phenomenon. The process of finding an appropriate emulator and an appropriate ROM led her through websites already saturated with extratextual content that suggested certain ideas of the game content. She had heard me speak of the game before. She had already listened to much of its music, accompanied on YouTube by comments. Being someone interested in games herself, she had certainly already encountered discussions of the game content like this one. She knew damn well that Agro would fall off that bridge. From all of this it is clear to me that the “extratext” was always inescapable. If she were to encounter the game truly without prior knowledge it would still not have “saved” her because she would just discover the extratext afterwards.

And what of my wife? My poor sweet wife? Just as no dry beach is spared from the tide, she too will be inundated by extratext that will indelibly shape how she receives and interprets the game content. She will not be a source of a “pure” opinion, but only another source of interpretation. She will never play Shadow of the Colossus as it was when it came out in 2005.

The space in consideration is a “consensus blob.” It has no hard boundaries, but it has gradients. Within the blob there are many shades of interpretation, but few overt contradictions except when comparing extremes. The blob is uncentered because there is no single “correct” or most stable interpretation. Areas of the blob give the appearance of a “consensus,” a shared notion or common interpretation, but really the gradient is everywhere and always-changing, like an amoeba. Even the creator of the art object can sway from point to point in the blob, forgetting wherever it was they started. The consensus is heraclitean. The extratext is absolutely inseparable from the text.

Really, we shouldn’t be miffed about it. Shadow of the Colossus can be about a lot of things, it’s not like we need a single definitive analysis. It will be a joy to watch my wife play, and I will be delighted to see what she thinks. I’m sure it will be new and exciting.

Overall, I give Reign Over Me a strong 6/10.

Sources

AstraFuckingGooGoo. “Shadow of the Colossus (PS4)- one of the worst games I’ve ever played.” r/patientgamers. https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/ujnx5q/shadow_of_the_colossus_ps4_one_of_the_worst_games/. Accessed 8 Aug. 2024.

Binder, Mike, dir. 2007. Reign over Me. Screenplay by Mike Binder. Columbia Pictures.

BrunoBRS. “Shadow of the Colossus: a Retrospective View”. Noobfeed. 27 Sep. 2011. https://www.noobfeed.com/features/160/shadow-of-the-colossus-a-retrospective-view

Diefendorff, Keith. “Sony’s Emotionally Charged Chip.” Microprocessor Report, vol. 13, no. 5.

Koop, Brandon. “Shadow of the Colossus: A Retrospective.” The Boss Key, 10 Apr. 2014, https://bradenkoop.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/shadow-of-the-colossus-a-retrospective/.

Lyles, Taylor. “Shadow of the Colossus Retrospective -- A Tragically Beautiful Love Story.” DualShockers, 26 Jan. 2018, https://www.dualshockers.com/shadow-of-the-colossus-retrospective/.

Metacritic. Reign over Me. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/reign-over-me/. Accessed 15 Aug. 2024.

“Nomad Colossus.” Team Ico Wiki, https://teamico.fandom.com/wiki/Nomad_Colossus.  Accessed 8 Aug. 2024.

Peeren, Esther. “Compelling Memory: 9/11 and the Work of Mourning in Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me.” Cultural Critique, vol. 92, no. 1, Dec. 2016, pp. 57–83. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2016.a617380.

Piquet, Léna, translator. “The Making of ‘Shadow of the Colossus.’” Froyok, Dec. 2007, https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/2772150/175939_PUBLISHED_Peeren_617380.pdf.

Quest for the Last Big Secret / Mysteries of SotC. PlayStation Community Forums, archived May 2013. http://web.archive.org/web/20130505104658/http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/Shadow-of-the-Colossus-PS2/Quest-for-the-Last-Big-Secret-Mysteries-of-SotC/td-p/20178777

Riga, Mac. “START/SELECT: Consuming Loneliness: A ‘Shadow of the Colossus’ Retrospective.” The Hoya, https://thehoya.com/guide/start-select-consuming-loneliness-a-shadow-of-the-colossus-retrospective/. Accessed 12 Aug. 2024.

Taylor, Jay. “Interview Extra: Fumito Ueda (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian).” Cane and Rinse, 27 Aug. 2019, https://caneandrinse.com/fumito-ueda-interview/.

Ueda, Fumito. Interview for CONTINUE Magazine, vol. 25., 2005. Translated by shmuplations, https://shmuplations.com/ueda/. Accessed 13 Aug. 2024.

[bunny-kisser]

If it's okay to ask I was wondering what Snarl's relationship like with all of Immortan Joe's children o( ❛ᴗ❛ )o?

OF COURSE it's okay, thank you for asking!! 🥺

Corpus Colossus - Snarl has the best relationship with Corpus. Corpus is intelligent and more naturally kind than anyone else in a leadership position in the Citadel, so Snarl feels comfortable and safe around him. Not to mention that Immortan Joe himself seems to show the most care for him, so he's very important to Snarl by extension.

Scabrous Scrotus - Snarl has the most fun with Scabrous. He likes to go on raids with Scabrous because he's fearless and impulsive in battle, leading to more exciting fights. The two tend to be a bad influence on one another, having a bit of a rivalry and encouraging each other to be more daring and aggressive which gives Immortan Joe a massive headache. However, the two of them butt heads sometimes too since Scabrous has a fiery temper.

Rictus Erectus - Rictus is the only one of Joe's children who Snarl actively dislikes and will avoid. Though he'd never admit it, Rictus makes Snarl incredibly nervous - his massive size, strength, and childlike disposition makes him unpredictable and dangerous in Snarl's eyes. Scabrous may be more volatile, but Snarl is confident in his ability to wrestle him into submission - Rictus, on the other hand, would absolutely demolish Snarl.

[margonozako]

Roundtable 2: Race in the Imaginary and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Mad Max: Fury Road is a 2015 film by George Miller that many hail as a feminist manifesto. It’s set in a barren wasteland, supposedly the not-too-distant future after the Water Wars and the depletion of oil. It follows Max after he’s captured by Immortan Joe’s War Boys and Furiosa’s attempt to flee and free Immortan Joe’s wives. It involves endless perfectly edited practical car chases, Nicholas Holt in so much makeup you can’t recognize him, and simply named characters and places like the “Bullet Farm” and “War Boys.”

It is clear from the very beginning that Immortan Joe is evil: his first scene involves close-ups of his battered and radiation-poisoned body. He is the alien because, according to Helen Addison-Smith's article, an “alien is easy to identify, and particular judgments about them are thus easily drawn from their appearance alone” (27). Several members of his “team,” like his son Corpus Colossus or The People Eater, also have emphasis put on their atypical bodies. Max and Furiosa, on the other hand, are not aliens: they’re conventionally attractive, able-bodied, recognizable humans. While Furiosa is missing her left forearm, she has a mechanical prosthetic and there is no attention drawn to this. Through the lens of Addison-Smith's article, it could be argued that Miller uses atypical bodies to signify alien- and otherness. 

Another very important point to bring up is the setting of this film. Though never explicitly stated, it is set in the Australian outback, a country that is home to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations and was stolen by the British. As far as I know, Courtney Eaton (Cheedo the Fragile), whose mother is of of Chinese, Cook Island and Māori descent, is the only indigenous actor in the film. Addison-Smith addresses this phenomenon, writing that “The diasporic subject has a sense of belonging to a place where [they do] not live … it ‘is the myth of the (lost or idealized) homeland, the object of both collective memory and of desire and attachment, which is constitutive to diasporas’” (28). A large part of the film’s plot is Furiosa and The Wives returning to Furiosa’s “homeland”: The Green Place, home to the Many Mothers. But, for the most part, none of this land belongs to any of the characters in the film – they do not have a right to it and, at the end of the day, they caused the apocalypse that landed them in the Outback fighting for their lives.

@theuncannyprofessoro

[georgi-girl]

Fury Road

Original meme belongs to Archangel470

I really wanted to do a Fury Road recast and since I couldn't any official ones, I used the Action Movie Cast meme (which was inspired by Fury Road)

The cast is this...

Hero: Larn (Fire and Ice) in the role of Max. He was separated from his tribe and was trying to find them when a posse of war boys captured him. Now he's caught up in a high-octane power struggle.

Hero's Love Interest (platonic, not romantic) : Marina (Sinbad; Legend of the Seven Seas) in the role of Furiosa. She was stuck working for the Warlord and plans to get the hell back to her ancestral home The Green Place. And she's bringing some friends with her.

The Villain: Jafar (Aladdin) in the role of Immorton Joe. He's the tyrannical Warlord ruling over a canyon oasis. His prized possessions are the unfortunate women he's chosen as his brides.

The Sidekick: Taron (The Black Cauldron) in the role of Nux. In this verse, he's called Tarry Black due to his black hair. He adores the Warlord with all his soul, and is distraught when he constantly fails him. Being with the freedom convoy gives him a new, better purpose in life.

The Traitor: Snow White (Happily Ever After) in the role of Cheedo. One of Jafars' former brides, she's called Snowflake due to her pale skin and fragile demeaner. When a big chase kills one of her fellow escapees, she panics and tries to run back to Jafar. (She's stopped though)

The Villains' Bodyguard: Mr. Hyde (The Pagemaster) in the role of Rictus Erectus. Jafar's oldest son, deform in body and mind, his one purpose in life is to lead his father's army.

The Hero's Superiors: Amalthia (Last Unicorn) and Yum-Yum (The Thief and the Cobbler) in the roles of Dag and Toast respectively. Called Shiny and Yummy, they adapt to life outside the quickest. When Snowflake tries to run back, they tackle her together. They've never met a man like Larn; when they tell him to do something, he does it with no argument. They quite enjoy that.

The Redeemer: Kaley (Quest for Camelot) in the role of Capable. Everyone calls her Dame. When she sees Tarry Black crying in the back of the rig. She comforts him and encourages him to keep living.

The Villains' Henchman: Dr. Vigglestien (Nightmare Before Christmas) in the role of the Organic Mechanic. Jafar's private doctor, and the only other man allowed to touch the brides.

The One Who Dies First: Odette (The Swan Princess) in the role of Splendid: Jafars' favorite bride and carrier of his next child. known as Golden, she's the bravest of the escapees. She's killed during the chase that freaks out Snowflake and strands Tar on the rig, and her baby dies with her.

Also starring...

Grumpy (Snow White) in the role of Corpus Colossus

Tala (Brother Bear) as the Keeper of the Seeds

Grandma Fa (Mulan) as Miss Giddy

All characters belong to their respective companies.

[jayessentialsblog]

The National Theatre is now the Wole Soyinka Centre for Arts and Culture, under President Tinubu's renaming

The National Theatre is now the Wole Soyinka Centre for Arts and Culture, under President Tinubu's renaming. In a statement issued to commemorate the Nobel Laureate's 90th birthday on Saturday, July 13, the President revealed this. The statement reads as follows  ‘’I am pleased to join admirers around the world in celebrating the 90th birthday of Nigeria's iconic son and the world-renowned Professor Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde, famously known as Wole Soyinka. Tomorrow the 13th July will be the climax of the series of local and international activities held in his honour. To underscore the global relevance of the literary giant, a symposium, along with poetry reading was held in Rabat Morocco on 9 July. The event was organized by the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco and the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA). Professor Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel Literature Prize in 1986, deserves all the accolades as he marks the milestone of 90 years on earth. Having beaten prostate cancer, this milestone is a fitting testament to his ruggedness as a person and the significance of his work. It is also fitting we celebrate this national treasure while he is still with us. I am, accordingly, delighted to announce the decision of the Federal Government to rename the National Theatre in Iganmu, Surulere, as the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and the Creative Arts. We do not only celebrate Soyinka’s remarkable literary achievements but also his unwavering dedication to the values of human dignity and justice. When he turned 80, I struggled to find words to encapsulate his achievements because they were simply too vast. Since then, he has added to his corpus with his series of Interventions, which have been published in many volumes. Professor Soyinka is a colossus, a true Renaissance person blessed with innumerable talents. He is a playwright, actor, poet, human rights and political activist, composer, and singer. He is a giant, bestriding not just the literary world but our nation, Africa, and the world. He remains the shining light of our nation, the gadfly that pokes our national soul, decrying tyranny and oppression, urging us to become better as a nation. He is one Nigerian whose influence transcends the Nigerian space and who inspires people around the world. Since his youth, he has been a vocal critic of oppression and injustice wherever it exists, from apartheid in South Africa to racism in the United States. Soyinka always speaks truth to power. Beginning in his 20s, he took personal risks for the sake of our nation. His courage was evident when he attempted to broker peace at the start of the civil war in 1967. Detained for two years for his bravery, he narrated his experience in his prison memoir, "The Man Died." Despite deprivation and solitary confinement, his resolve to speak truth to power and fight for the marginalized was further strengthened. His early writing, such as 'The Lion and the Jewel,’ ’Death and the King's Horseman', not only testified to his mastery of language, his innovative storytelling, but also his unflinching commitment to enthroning a fair and just society. Our paths crossed during our just struggle for the enthronement of democracy in Nigeria following the annulment of June 12, 1993 presidential election. When faced with a trial in absentia and death sentence by the military regime at home, he galvanized opposition in exile through NALICON and NADECO. His global stature made him the face of our struggle to validate June 12 and restore democracy in Nigeria. Today, I join the world to celebrate his profound influence on generations of writers, scholars, and activists who have been inspired by his work. I celebrate him for giving us the spark to fight and confront military dictators in our country. I celebrate him for his enduring spirit and for teaching us that literature and drama can be used as a powerful tool to challenge the status quo. I wish Professor Soyinka an incredibly happy 90th birthday. May he continue in good health to find creative fulfilment in the next decade leading up to his centennial. May he continue to inspire us all to build a nation where people are free from oppression and our teeming youths can live up to their dreams without being a wasted generation. Read the full article

[agendaculturaldelima]

#ProyeccionDeVida

🎬 “MAD MAX. FURIA EN LA CARRETERA” [Mad Max, Fury road]

🔎 Género: Acción / Ciencia Ficción / Futuro Post Apocalíptico / Road Movie / Western Futurista / Reboot./ Película de Culto

⌛️ Duración: 120 minutos

✍️ Guión: Nick Lathouris, Brendan McCarthy y George Miller

🎼 Música: Junkie XL

📷 Fotografía: John Seale

🗯 Argumento: Perseguido por su turbulento pasado, Mad Max cree que la mejor forma de sobrevivir es ir solo por el mundo. Sin embargo, se ve arrastrado a formar parte de un grupo que huye a través del desierto en un War Rig conducido por una Emperatriz de élite: Furiosa. Escapan de una Ciudadela tiranizada por Immortan Joe, a quien han arrebatado algo irreemplazable. Enfurecido, el Señor de la Guerra moviliza a todas sus bandas y persigue implacablemente a los rebeldes en una "guerra de la carretera" de altas revoluciones... Cuarta entrega de la saga post-apocalíptica que resucita la trilogía que a principios de los ochenta protagonizó Mel Gibson.

👥 Reparto: Tom Hardy (Max Rockatansky), Charlize Theron (Imperator Furiosa), Nicholas Hoult (Nux), Hugh Keays-Byrne (Inmortal Joe), Zoë Kravitz (Toast), Courtney Eaton (Cheedo), Riley Keough (Capable), Abbey Lee Kershaw (Dag) y Quentin Kenihan (Corpus Colossus)

📢 Dirección: George Miller

© Productoras: Kennedy Miller Productions, Warner Bros., Village Roadshow & RatPac-Dune Entertainment.

📼 Distribuidora: Warner Bros.

🌎 Países: Australia-Estados Unidos

📅 Año: 2015

📽 Proyección:

📆 Jueves 06 de Junio

🕗 8:00pm.

🎦 Cine Caleta (calle Aurelio de Souza 225 - Barranco)

🚶‍♀️🚶‍♂️ Ingreso libre

🙂 A tener en cuenta: Prohibido el ingreso de bebidas y comidas. 🌳💚🌻🌛

[tiffpixies]

I feel like Corpus Colossus just knows what the fuck is up

[devilsurvivor-2-recordbreaker]

Code Vein is bad in the ways that only seem evident from the view from half way down. Like the movement feels good but seeing a shit roll and thinking it gets better doesn't make it better at all. The fact that nearly every enemy can just cut through like wet toilet paper and with healing giving you so little plus taking so long makes it a better choice to just wait for your companion to lend you health. Then heal and maybe send some back to them. Plus the fact that all most environments just continue down a path of becoming nearly impossible to spot the point your supposed to go to makes it even worse. Like even crucial items don't feel to have any relevancy while playing because you'll just get the title and that's it, into the inventory without a second though. So now your scanning the area you completed searching for whatever you missed so you can just continue already when after consulting the on hand guide realize that you actually had the thing thr whole time and the door way was so bland and oddly obscured for blending so well with the environment you just did t think anything of it and now have to in shame walk over and continue and oh hey it's the boss of the area wow what a push over that was, I don't even feel like it gave much challenge outside of hlchoking ym vontroller to rein control over this blasted game and then it's off to do that again atkeast dozen or so times til you climb up the corpus colossus and fight Omega Death, Master of the Four Horsemen and put a end to the nightmare and get one of the endings where you form a romantic relationship with one of the cardboard women you can swoon and have a dozen babies with them in the post game cutscene and then be forced to do this all over for the five other people you could romance to get all endings and the Super Sceret Polycule Divorce ending where you max out everyone's relation ship status and then put them all in a pokemon storage box and blow it up.

Anyways I wouldn't exactly recommend playing Code Vein. It's so middle road that calling it that would a insult to the heterosexual community. It's so straight it curves like the earth to create a perfect circle which life can inhabit. It's just a game. Not a great one but one that seems more enjoyable with a full guide on a second monitor / your phone than just blind. If you like bloodborne especially don't play this cause the blood theme in this game is a joke compared to the blood theme in blood borne. It may remind you how good bloodborne is but that won't make the game any more fun or challenging. But the jank and funk movement of this game will have to be for another midnight induced long post about videogames I'm playing. For now I leave you with this:

Imitation may be the most touching form of flattery but imitation without understanding what makes your subject so touching loses the point of what made it special in the first place. By then your creating something inspired rather than imitating and then will the heart of the artist by weighed against their better judgment to say 'I could do this' against the limitations of their ability to do so.

Anyways play every fromsoft ware game now.

[zhewitra]

A fantastic product is the Extra Super Zhewitra tablet. 

 Visit us:      https://medsarcade.com/

The camp-express phosphodiesterase type 5 (pde5) protein prevents the enhancement of blood flow for erections in extra super zhewitra by limiting an individual's nitric oxide production while actually searing. As a result, the veins encircling the penis's large corpus relax, enabling more vital blood to flow through and giving someone an erection or, more accurately, a grounded erection than expected. 

One of the outstanding additives in extra super zhewitra vardenafil is vardenafil, which significantly inhibits the synthesis of nitric oxide in men's bodies while they are sexually actively involved. As a result, the veins surrounding the corpus colossus of the penis loosen, allowing more distinct blood to flow by means.

[badtonki]

Corpus colossus

It is estimated that at least one in 4,000 individuals has a disorder of the corpus callosum. Impairments in social interaction and communication in individuals having a disorder of the corpus callosum may overlap with autism spectrum disorder behaviors. The corpus callosum acts as a bridge so that input from. Each hemisphere of the brain controls movement and feeling on the opposite side of the body. It acts as a connective pathway that links the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex. Individuals with these disorders have a higher risk of hearing deficits and cardiac abnormalities than individuals with the normal structure. by primary degeneration of the corpus callosum, is a rare complication of chronic alcoholism.1 Although nutritional deficiencies have been suspected. The corpus callosum is a hard, C-shaped structure found in the middle of the brain. Other disorders of the corpus callosum include dysgenesis, in which the corpus callosum is developed in a malformed or incomplete way, and hypoplasia, in which the corpus callosum is thinner than usual. It contains 200 million nerve fibers that pass information back and forth. Children with the most severe brain malformations may have intellectual impairment, seizures, hydrocephalus, and spasticity. The corpus callosum is a structure that connects the right and left sides of the brain. The effects of the disorder range from subtle or mild to severe, depending on associated brain abnormalities. ACC can also be associated with malformations in other parts of the body, such as midline facial defects. Cast and crew from the film Mad Max: Fury Road and celebrities walked the red carpet at Event Cinemas. ACC can occur as an isolated condition or in combination with other cerebral abnormalities, including Arnold-Chiari malformation, Dandy-Walker syndrome, schizencephaly (clefts or deep divisions in brain tissue), and holoprosencephaly (failure of the forebrain to divide into lobes.) Girls may have a gender-specific condition called Aicardi syndrome, which causes severe cognitive impairment and developmental delays, seizures, abnormalities in the vertebra of the spine, and lesions on the retina of the eye. Pictured: Quentin Kenihan Companion (Corpus Colossus). The corpus callosum transfers motor, sensory, and cognitive information between the brain hemispheres. It connects the left and right sides of the brain, allowing for communication between both hemispheres. It is caused by a disruption of brain cell migration during fetal development. The corpus callosum is a thick band of nerve fibers that divides the cerebral cortex lobes into left and right hemispheres. In ACC the corpus callosum is partially or completely absent. Agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) is one of several disorders of the corpus callosum, the structure that connects the two hemispheres (left and right) of the brain.