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pearl-blue-musings · 4 years ago

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Never Been Kissed: EraserMic

HI WELCOME TO SAD BOI HOURS

so i didn’t technically have an idea for them but yall know how the brain be sometimes....

This will be longer than some of the other ones because SAD and gets a little steamy at the end so I might make a smutty part to get better at writing smut who knows

Warnings: language, suggestive content, 18+ to be safe, also angst whoops

Pairing: EraserMic x fem!reader

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

To say you were surprised is an understatement. You figured your two best friends wouldn’t be spending their New Years Eve with you in your lonely apartment eating pizza and watching crazy countdown shows.

And yet, here you were. Snuggled in between them with your head on the stoic and quiet dark haired man, laughing at whatever joke the loud blond squawked during a commercial break. To you, this was bliss; just a woman with her two male best friends.

Two best friends who were in love with each other and had been for awhile.

Two best friends that you were also in love with.

But you did as you normally do: squash them down into nothingness, trapping them in a locked box with no means of finding the key.

You had met the duo as a transfer student in your third year at U.A. Since Hizashi was better with English, he was your guide and helper for the first couple of weeks helping you get adjusted to life and catching you up on things you might’ve missed. You can never forget the way his eyes lit up at you upon first glance. His presence was overwhelming but nary in a bad way. He was overwhelmingly sweet and patient with you, despite his enormous personality.

In time you met Aizawa, his counterpart, the Yin to his Yang. Where Hizashi was large, he was small. Where Aizawa would ponder his thoughts, the blond would blurt them out. They really were perfect together and somehow you had entered into their perfect world.

It was no wonder you had developed feelings and fast.

They welcomed you when no one would. Looked after you when you were stressed, the butt of a joke, or were missing home. They were always there, always by your side.

So why did it hurt so much when you found them together?

You hadn’t meant to arrive at his house early for your study session, but you were in such a good mood! Were you thinking of confessing? Maybe. But that all went away when you turned the corner too early. There they were, your two best friends kissing in the most passionate way imaginable.

And you just watched.

How had you not known? Of course you had known, they were perfect for each other. All you did was complicate the narrative of their life. You knew about the friend they had lost almost a year ago so you understood their close ties even more now. They found solace in each other. And who were you? Some new foreign transfer student stupidly and hopelessly in love with the two guys who gave you attention and the time of day?

You only watched seconds longer for them to break apart and then peck each other on the lips again. You hear Hizashi whisper, “Do you think we should tell her?”

Aizawa sigh’s, “Only if you want to. I know how much you care about her.”

You didn’t dare listen to the rest of their conversation as you turned heel and ran. Tears beginning to cloud your vision as you run back to your place. Once you got your breath and quirk under control, you had sent them both a text saying that something had come up. For now, it was enough for them and for you.

You began to avoid them for a few weeks, forcing yourself to move on and bury your feelings deeper. You had resided to being the third wheel, the one that’s always left out, the black sheep, the odd one out; as if that hadn’t been your life before so it wasn’t anything new. What had shocked you one day as the lunch bell rang, was a pale hand grabbing onto your uniform.

“Hizashi is worried about you.”

You couldn’t meet his gaze.

“I’m worried about you. You’ve been avoiding us.”

You conjure up a quick lie that doesn’t get past the observant student. “Sorry, I’ve been really try to focus more on school and graduation and trying to find my own identity. Having to make up internship time while getting a provisional license has taken up most of my time.”

Aizawa was unconvinced but played along. “I get it. Talk to us when you can, okay?”

You only nod and kept your head down to avoid his knowing gaze. You had walked away just in time for a tear to fall, and for you to run into the other person from the dynamic duo.

“You’re lying to us, princess,” Hizashi says surprisingly low. “What’s wrong?”

Soon you were joined by his partner and had both of them boring into you. Well it was better tell a half truth, not like they needed to know.

“Sorry you guys,” you mumble. “I’ve been really stressed with all i have to do to graduate with you all. I didn’t wanna burden you with that.”

And my unresolved feelings

“Is that all?! You had us worried sick! Don’t keep us out like that okay? Ya dig?”

You couldn’t help the smile that spread onto your lips at his usual language. “Yeah,” you giggle, “I’m sorry. I promise I’ll tell you two everything.”

“Speaking of truths,” Aizawa interrupts, “there’s something we’ve been meaning to tell you.”

“You’re dating, I know. I wanted to give you two space so...”

Lime green eyes widen and his jaw dropped. “You knew?! Is it that obvious??”

You full on laughed at that. “It kinda is. You two are perfect for each other.”

Ever since the unveiling of particular truths the three of you were always close. You didn’t always feel like a third wheel to their relationship but all of you were open books to each other. Except about your feelings; that is a secret you are willing to take to your grave.

It was only ten minutes until midnight and the drinks had finally slowed from their free flowing. The three of you enjoyed a couple drinking games of watching the different countdowns and by this point, you were drunk. You had noticed the time and lifted your head from Shouta’s shoulder and began to get up.

“Hey you, why are you moving?”

You had paused and were halfway standing when those almond eyes bore into yours. “Oh, well it’s, it’s almost midnight. Ion wanna get in the way of your kiss so I’ll, I will move.”

The couple exchange a glance, a look on their faces one you had never seen before then back to you. You don’t pick up on it and continue to stand.

“(Y/n)...it’s a stupid thing it doesn’t-”

“I’ll get the champagne. Sham. Pain. Sham pahgney. Wait there.”

The two men on the floor remain in their same spots. Hizashi trying not to chortle too much at your pronouncing of champagne and Aizawa trying to figure your mood. He never thought anything was awkward between the three of you, but lately it had begun to be. He’d find himself wondering what you were doing or how it would be nice to cuddle you in his sleeping bag. Even Hizashi doesn’t get sleeping bag rights.

And Hizashi can act aloof and unaware, but he’s been having urges for you in a way that he thought he had gotten rid of. He had told Shouta back in U.A. but the first time he saw you he wanted to believe in love at first sight but he was already with him by then. Why? He already loved someone, why did he still feel incomplete?

As much as they loved you showering them in compliments that they were perfect for each other, the couple had always felt empty. But that feeling would change when you were around. How were they to tell you how they really felt? It should be obvious how much they care and love you, they each cancelled their radio show and patrol for the evening to be with you. Why couldn’t you see?

You had returned with three champagne flutes filled with the golden bubbly drink. You frown a little that they hadn’t moved, so you sat down and handed them their drinks. The only sound that was heard between the trio was the announcement of the final five minutes of the year. You rested your head against the couch and deeply exhaled.

“(Y/n),” Shouta starts, “are you okay?”

“Yeah dove! It looks like you were crying! Talk to us!”

Your head quickly snaps up and you take your empty hand to touch your face. Fuck, you had been crying. When did that happen?

“Oh you two,” you sniffle out while wiping your face. “It’s nothing, nothing! I was remembering my, uh, ex and how we were supposed to kiss at midnight and I guess I got sad. It’s nothing.”

“He wasn’t worth your time, ya dig? You’re beautiful!”

“You can do better. He didn’t treat you right.”

It seems that they both spoke at the same time, making the three of you break into laughter. But once you take in their words, you begin to sober up slightly. Did they really mean it? There’s no way, you need to keep those feelings locked up. Suddenly the flood works were opened.

Hizashi is the first to wrap an arm around you. “(Y/n) princess. Talk to us.”

Lock it up, bury it deeper.

“Like I said, my ex. I was finally going to get my New Years kiss but it’s not gonna happen.”

Throw away the key.

“Dumb right? I’ve never had a New Years kiss and that’s what’s got me so upset.”

They can never know.

And now there’s only 30 seconds left of the year and you’ve already come up with a resolution. Let them go. Let go of your feelings for your two best friends. You had started that resolution earlier in the year with a new boyfriend but he had dumped you at the beginning of December. He claimed that your heart wasn’t in it and that you didn’t love him. You did, you just happened to love two other men too. That’s how it is.

“It’s not dumb, Kitten. You have a right to be sad.”

The timer began to dwindle from 10. You hadn’t realized how your tears were being wiped away from both sides of your face. All three of you had abandoned your drinks in exchange for this moment. Your cheeks were warm but not from the alcohol. You began to smell two distinct scents overcoming you as you began to feel them come closer into your space.

Don’t let them know, and let them go.

“Happy New Year!”

You had barely heard the announcer say those words when you felt two sets of lips on your cheeks. This is all you had ever wanted but you couldn’t stop crying when they didn’t stop touching and caressing you.

“Please stop,” you whimper out as you feel yourself being pulled in one direction.

You meet lime green irises as he holds your chin. “No, we won’t. Fuck, can’t you see how much we love you?” The blond silences your rebuttal by kissing your lips in a way you had only dreamed of. A different set of hands had rested themselves underneath you sweater and was feeling all of your skin, reaching the front of your bra.

When you part for air panting, your eyebrows furrow. “I don’t, I don’t understand. Please don’t hurt me anymore. I, I mean... How long have you known?”

You’re turned around to face Shouta and his dilated pupils. “We’ve always known about our feelings for you. We were waiting for you to see how much we love you.” He pecks your lips lightly.

“You love me?”

Their words and actions are incredible to you right now. But you can’t think clearly as Aizawa cups your face to clear it of more tears as he affectionately places his lips on yours, kissing some of your tears and hurt away.

Aizawa nods into your kiss and pulls back, noticing a string of saliva connecting your plump lips to his. “We have, for a while now.”

“We realized our feelings for you a year after we had all graduated,” Hizashi intercepts. He takes the two of you up onto the couch and places you in his lap comfortably. “Well, I knew I liked you from the moment I met you! And I think for Shou it was when you didn’t speak to us for a few weeks. But then,” he stops to kiss your cheek and then trail down to the corner of your lips, “after you had gotten hurt as a sidekick and were severely injured,” his hand draws circles on your thigh, “we realized we didn’t know what to do if you weren’t around, ya know?” He finishes with a kiss.

You pull away, “But that was five years ago?” You feel the couch dip behind you as Aizawa takes your free hand and interlocks it with his, giving you comforting rubs. But he also takes your hands closer to his crotch. He’s hard? “You kept dating shitty guys.”

“Yeah! To try to get over you!” You cover your face in your hands as you begin to remember the people you had dated and how they didn’t compare to the two men beside you right now. You didn’t want to admit it, but you were starting to get the feeling that they had some more plans in mind for your new year start, considering one was already hard and the other hadn’t stopped touching you. The touches went from friendly to lust filled in mere seconds.

“Listener, baby girl I gotta know. Why did you really stop talking to us back then?” the blond pinches your thigh and moves his hand closer and closer to your heat making your heart beat race.

“I, hah, I caught you two.”

The pair stops and looks to you.

“Kissing. Before one of our study sessions. I was heartbroken. I overheard part of the conversation but I ran away crying.”

Aizawa catches your neck and you end up meeting his lips again, as another pair trail up and down your neck. “Kitten, if you had staid longer you would have heard us talk about maybe opening it up to you. It was his idea since he caught feels first.”

The man at your neck whines and bites down, eliciting a moan from you as he pouts at his lover. “Don’t put this on me! You wanted to include her too but you were too chicken to admit your feelings.”

“Guys...”

Aizawa runs his hand down to your ass and gives it a tight squeeze. Your lips involuntarily open and he prods his tongue inside your mouth. Your hands find purchase in his shirt, finding some sort of stability. From how this was going, you weren’t going to be able to walk tomorrow.

Both men look up to you with love in their eyes and hearts and you smile fondly at them both.

“(Y/n),” Hizashi breathes, “we love you so much.”

“I love you guys too.”

Aizawa grunts and mumbles out,

“Let us show you how much we love you, okay Kitten?”

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

@cupcake-rogue

#my writing #i did the thing #never been kissed #erasermic #erasermic x reader #aizawa x reader #aizawa shouta #hizashi yamada x reader #yamada hizashi x reader #hizashi yamada #present mic x reader #eraserhead x reader #bnha x reader #bnha reader insert #mha x reader #present mic x fem!reader #aizawa x female reader #erasermic x fem!reader

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years ago

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#2yrsago How to Talk About Videogames: a book that is serious (but never dull) about games

Ian Bogost's How to Talk About Videogames isn't just a book about games -- it's a book about criticism, and where it fits in our wider culture. Bogost is the rare academic writer whose work is as clear and exciting as the best of the mainstream, and whose critical exercises backfire by becoming enormous commercial/popular successes.

Bogost is the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is one of videogames' best-known academics. While How to Talk about Videogames collects essays that Bogost has previously published online, the collection rises above a mere anthology by dint of being selective in those essays, picking out the 20 pieces that stand the test of time and that reinforce, rather than repeating, each other.

Bogost introduces the collection with a sharp little essay about the nature of criticism itself -- what's the difference between criticism and a review? Using the example of the Amazon reviews for toasters, he shows how reviews are about understanding the particular characteristics of a toaster, while criticism is about answering the question, "What does this toaster mean?" That is, what does it do to us to eat toast? What does it say that so many of our toasters either harken to the 1930s -- streamlined, deco -- or the 1950s -- modernist colors and forms?

Applied to video games, this turns out to be an incredibly illuminating approach. Just as I had my mind blown when I first read John Kessel's seminal Creating the Innocent Killer -- a spectacular work of criticism about Ender's Game -- so too does Bogost manage to profoundly change the way I view the games that are all around us by examining them in the light of their economic, cultural and artistic context. Bogost is a video-games industry insider who understands the commercial pressures on games as well as anyone, and a creator who understands the artistic impulses behind games creation, and a player who understands what being compelled by a game feels like, and he synthesizes these different identities into sometimes hilarious, sometimes scorching (sometimes both) critical works.

Take the opening essay, The Squalid Grace of Flappy Bird: it's an essay about the commercial and cultural blip that was the Flappy Bird incident, but it's also saying something profound about how a certain kind of game makes you feel, and how it feels to make that game. Whew.

Meanwhile, The Blue Shell is Everything That's Wrong With America is a deep dive into the nerdish history of character design in the Super Mario franchise, and the economic forces that changed the identity of Nintendo's characters -- but it's also about why a certain kind of sprite in a certain game evokes a certain complicated emotion, and how that ties into the otaku-ish obsessive folk-history of "a quadrupedal Koopa with a spiked shell."

In Free Speech is Not a Marketing Plan and Taking Bully Seriously, Bogost investigates "controversial" games as serious artistic works, leaving aside the moral handwringing and demanding that the creators to dig deeper into the themes that got them in trouble in the first place.

From the high-minded ("Work is the Best Place to Goof Off," about whether simulators are games, and if so, why), to the nerded-out (an a Gobbler Have it All? a secret history of Ms Pac Man, with special emphasis on her gender politics), Bogost turns his keen eye on every kind of game and every question of gaming, and wherever it alights, he sees something that the rest of us could do well to attend to.

How to Talk about Videogames [Ian Bogost/Univ Of Minnesota Press]

(Image: Four Arcade Games, Rob Boudon, CC-BY)

https://boingboing.net/2016/03/28/how-to-talk-about-videogames.html

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creativesage · 7 years ago

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(via Age Diversity and Innovation Teams – Innovation Excellence)

By Pete Foley

Diversity is good for innovation. Integrating different backgrounds, fields of expertise, depths and breadths of knowledge and experience all help to create new interfaces where innovative ideas can spark and thrive. Likewise, diverse thinking styles and personality types help foster balance between ideation, creativity, execution and delivery.

There are lots of ways to increase diversity, but should this include age?

Are we better of with younger, passionate teams that challenge the status quo, or more mature teams that leverage broader experience and expertise? Or are these both stereotypes, and age doesn’t really matter.

Homogeneity in innovation teams… is generally a bad idea

In the case of age, teams dominated by experience can find it harder to challenge givens and norms. They are also susceptible to confirmation and functional fixedness biases fueled by common experience. As a result they may move teams too quickly from ideation into execution and delivery. However, teams lacking experience may have a counter propensity to repeat historical failures – Not just reinventing the wheel, which even when it is not novel, can still be useful, but also reinventing concepts that are neither useful or novel, analogous to New Coke, Newton PA’s and DeLorean’s. These are concepts that are obviously bad in hindsight, but less so in real time.

Age and Scientific Creativity

A common assumption is that innovation is a young person’s game. Indeed, Max Planck said “Science advances one death at a time” and Einstein once commented that “a person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so”. Indeed, many discoveries that led to Nobel prizes in Physics and Quantum mechanics were made by scientists while in their 20’s or 30’s. But this is no longer the case, and the mean age of Nobel Prize winning achievements since 1980 is a little under 50 years old. I believe this reflects that as fields mature, it takes longer to accrue the critical mass of knowledge necessary for even the most brilliant to make breakthrough advances.

It’s Been a Long Time Since… I Rock and Rolled

It’s not just science where innovation can appear to be dominated by youth. For the past two years we have sadly seen far too many Rock and Rollers pass on, from my personal hero David Bowie, to Prince, Tom Petty, George Michael, Chris Cornel, Greg Allman, and However, as painful as their loss was, most of them appeared to have long since passed their creative and commercial peaks. They are not alone, the Beatles, Stones, Bowie, The Who, Elton John, Led Zeppelin all produced their masterpieces in their twenties or thirties. With all due respect, few people go to see Paul McCartney or The Who these days primarily to hear their new songs.

There are always exceptions, such as Bowie’s heart wrenching Blackstar, or Lou Reed’s beautifully crafted Love and Death, but in general, rock and roll innovation belonged, and still belongs to the young. But Rock and Roll is also a ‘young’ art form.

If we look more broadly at the arts, correlation between youth and creativity is less clear. Michaelangelo may have completed David in his late 20’s, but was also actively creating masterpieces until his death at a very respectable age of 88. Mozart composed his ninth symphony at the astonishing age of 16, but his Jupiter symphony, often considered his most innovative, was completed just a couple of years before his untimely death at age 35, at least suggesting he may not have peaked creatively. While life spans were often shorter as we look back in history, Picasso, Dali, Da Vinci were all highly creative throughout their careers.

The Myth of 10,000 Hours

Another concept that supports some correlation between maturity and peak innovation is the idea that 10,000 hours forms an essential foundation for innovation, and 10,000 hours takes time to accrue. This is not a bad concept as a general principle, but is also a vast oversimplification. In reality, the critical mass, and hence total hours of experience needed to innovate is going to vary enormously between different disciplines, and also between individuals. In some cases, 10,000 hours can even get in the way, as it can require unlearning. As a personal example, I came of age as a musician along with Punk Rock.

Unfortunately, I started learning how to play guitar at a young age, and so had close to 10,000 hours when punk rock exploded onto the music scene. At that moment in time my experience was often a distinct disadvantage. Audiences demanded raw, primitive guitar and bass parts. Mine instead sounded, and were, contrived, as I was trying to unlearn the complexity I’d already learned, which is extremely difficult.

A Case for Balance

Often a balance of experience and naivety is the ideal. Nobody wants to go under the knife of a raw, creative ‘punk rock’ surgeon, or take off in a plane flown by a ‘punk rock pilot’. However, the ideal for complex surgery is often not the most senior surgeon either, as she will often only operate a couple of times a month. An ideal balance is likely a junior surgeon with the automatic motor skills and habits of someone who operates routinely many times a day, teamed with a senior surgeon, who has accumulated experience of most oddities and exceptions, and who can draw on that deep experience in the face of the unexpected.

It’s a loose analogy, but mixed levels of experience are not a bad goal for an innovation team, bringing together recent real world experience, open minds, deep knowledge and hard earned experience. Mixed ages also bring a diversity of empathy. For example, older people are typically better at understanding some of the physical limitations associated with age, such as poorer eyesight, reduced physical strength and mobility. But these can also be great proxys for simplification that also works across broader demographics. A package that is easily read by a senior also carries a simpler message that requires less cognitive bandwidth for everyone.

Managing the Cost of Experience

Finally, one argument I’ve heard for teams with a strong bias for youth is that they are cheaper. So what if they make a few mistakes, it’s still cheaper than employing expensive, proven innovators. There may be cases where this is true, especially in digital domains where experiments are cheap to run, and can be turned around very quickly. But I’d still argue for some experience, especially as a little experience can go a long way, and potentially be spread across multiple teams. And experience not only helps prevent us from repeating past errors, but also helps in understanding why something does or doesn’t work. Even if we can run infinite A/B tests, unless we underpin results with theory and understanding, we’ll never develop predictive capability, and so be vulnerable to competition who design experiments based on hypothesis, or perhaps don’t always need to experiment at all.

Also, innovation teams should not be solely about delivering results. They are also about developing capability, and this grows best in groups with mixed experience, where mentoring and experience sharing occurs in both directions.

In Summary: Age and Experience Diversity Will Generally Deliver Multiple Benefits:

1. Help to avoid reinventing the equivalent of the Newton or the Edsel: Have at least one or two members of the team who have enough history and experience to avoid reinventing epic failures.

2. Avoid the ’seen it all, done it all’ trap, and have enough openness to challenge ‘Givens’ and sacred cows. Just because a concept failed before doesn’t mean it will fail now. Some ideas are ahead of their time, and some are enabled by new technology in ways it is hard for someone who failed before to see.

3. Grow Capability. Mixed experience teams pass experience and theory onto younger members faster than they can learn simply via trial and error, but also force more experienced team members to sharpen the saw, challenge sacred cows, and add new creative life to their processes.

4. Provide first-hand empathy for age based differences. A young designer can always don rubber gloves and glasses to experience limitations of age. But living with it brings deeper insight. Likewise, just because older demographics may take longer to adopt new technology, it doesn’t mean it won’t work for them. Younger team members can often show older ones opportunities they may find hard to imagine.

Aiming for age diversity doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider weighting teams for age or other attributes. Using personality types as an example, if we want a team that is going to create a lot of new ideas, then consider overweighting for openness. If we have tight deadlines, and are in a race to market, maybe overweight in conscientiousness.

Likewise, the demographic targets, technical expertise, or the size of the disruption we need to make for different projects may favor a bias towards different age groups. But a designed in bias like this is different to the kind of unintended homogeneity that can come from pulling together a team of similar seniority based primarily on functional expertise, rather than also considering length of experience, personality type, and T-shaped innovation capability.

Of course, age is only a proxy, and some people achieve a critical mass of experience at a young age. Others remain high energy, challenging and contrarian for all of their lives. An individuals innovation age is somewhat analogous to Dr. Mike Roizen’s Real Age concept as applied to health. Because of differences in diet, exercise, weight, abuse and chronic illness, two people of the same chronological age may differ quite significantly in wellness, likely lifespan, and overall physical health.

Likewise, innovators who are constantly learning new things, exploring and publishing in new areas, and collaborating with other individuals in a wide variety of fields may just maintain a younger innovator age. But overall, it’s at least worth considering deliberately mixing ages in a team, especially in organizations where it is common for everyone at a similar hierarchical level to be of somewhat similar age.

[Entire post — click on the title link to read it at Innovation Excellence.]

***

Speaking of Innovation and Innovators...

We are proud and honored to have had our @CreativeSage company Twitter account chosen for the sixth year in a row now (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017), for the Top 50 Innovation Twitter Sharers List! We want to thank Innovation Excellence and everyone in our community who voted for our account again this past year.

Additionally, Founder/CEO/Chief Imagination Officer Cathryn Hrudicka maintains a multidisciplinary artist account at @CathrynHrudicka that some of you may want to follow, too. She has served as an Artist-in-Residence, and can recommend other Artists-in-Residence in all artistic disciplines, for companies and organizations.

At Creative Sage™, we love to work with clients on social innovation, educational innovation, healthcare innovation, civic and government innovation projects, as well as corporate innovation projects. Our core capabilities include creativity training and coaching, and the design and facilitation of innovation programs, including in the areas of design thinking, arts-based processes, applications of science and neuroscience tools when appropriate, change management, and business model innovation.

We have been very effective in helping organizational leaders and employees move through transitions and cultural changes. We work with for-profit, nonprofit, B-corps, trade associations, and other types of organizations.

In addition to offering our services in creativity and innovation program design, consulting, leadership coaching, and training, we may be able to help your organization define and choose a Chief Innovation Officer (or another innovation management role) — or our founder, Cathryn Hrudicka, may be able to serve in that role for your organization, on a contract, part-time or limited full-time basis.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss your situation and how we can help your organization move forward to a more innovative and profitable future. You can also call us at 1-510-845-5510 in San Francisco / Silicon Valley.

We look forward to helping you find the path to luminous creativity and continuous innovation!

***

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beaucoup2cool · 7 years ago

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Big Beautiful Wall: Architecture and Ethics in the Divided States of North America

Approaching the borderwall as architecture means looking at its real and intended program. In this way, value judgments cannot strictly be separated from the function of the borderwall itself. Judgments about the wall are inevitably ethical judgments. I begin with a brief social context of the borderzone to understand the ideological forces behind real and imaginary walls. I then investigate a range of discursive statements by which these walls are considered beautiful. The critical and theoretical reception of the Big Beautiful Wall has been well-documented, and can roughly be separated into two camps: populist and emancipatory.

One the one hand, Trump’s espousal represents the mainstream, populist conception of the borderwall as a necessary and effective barrier of social ills. Even statements about the imaginary wall becomes both the symptom and cause of populist, xenophobic myths within and beyond the borderzone. Trump’s is the dominant discourse which has constructed the actually-existing barriers onto which is projected the trajectory of the Big Beautiful Wall to come, for many criticisms of the Big Beautiful Wall critique only its practicality its designs and not the underlying ethics.

The other discourse under consideration is that of the activist-architect, informed by postcolonial mobility studies, which I have called the emancipatory position. Within the debates of borderculture, architectural theory, criticism and activism there is a brewing movement to counter populist conceptions of the borderzone. The Big Beautiful Wall and the existing border architecture becomes the subject and site of a new critical stance towards its underlying ethics of exclusion, with architects questioning even the perceived neutrality of nonparticipation in design of border infrastructure. The discourse is shifting under the influence of the new ideas and their disseminations, intervening in the mainstream imaginary and recasting both the border barrier and resulting in new more emancipatory paradigms of international limits.

The borderwall is nestled in the borderzone of a bi-national borderculture, 84% urban, with a current population of 15 million people, and projected to rise to 20 million by 2020. The borderzone can be best imagined as 15 pairs of sister cities strung out along an arbitrary line between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico [fig. 3]. The Big Beautiful Wall is the object which most influences the rest of the borderzone. In the struggle between these two opposing visions of the borderwall we can also imagine the wall less as an architectural intervention nor as a mechanism of social engineering but, as Bruno Latour and Bill Brown has suggested, “quasi-object” and “quasi-subject.” Together with human agents, the Big Beautiful Wall contributes to forming the component parts of the organization of the “temporality of the animate world,” both within and beyond the borderzone itself. The real and imaginary borderwalls are not merely the merger of the symbolism of the Great Pyramids and the functional austerity of a nuclear waste dump, but perhaps the subjects who themselves “think” borderculture, evidenced only in a small glimpse within the discourses investigated herein.

Investigating the judgments of the Big Beautiful Wall it is first necessary to look at the 654 miles (1,046 kilometers) of existing border fortification in the US/ Mexico limit, the physically existing borderzone between the United States of America and Mexico. As describe by the Pan-American Health Organization, the borderzone between the United States and Mexico:

represents a binational geo–political system based on strong social, economic, cultural, and environmental connections governed by different policies, customs, and laws [which determine] commerce, tourism, sister–city familial ties, Mexico’s assembly plants or maquiladoras (plants that import components for processing or assembly by Mexican labor and then export the finished products), ecological services, a shared heritage, social partnerships, and immigration.

Though the two nations have shared this space since 1847 until 2006 only a few dozen miles were fenced. Before 2006 the borderwall took many forms, from “an imaginary line marked with some scatter monuments to a light barbed fence, to a wire grid, to a heavy metal wall, until becoming what it is today: series of aggressive metal fences and enormous concrete posts.” The major shift in US security after 9/11 recast the undefended border as major security vulnerability and the U.S. Secure Fence Act of 2006 mandated the construction of 700 miles of borderwall. Inspired by [and longer than] the so-called Israeli Security Fence—“walls work, just ask Israel”—the major difference is that the Israelis’ wall objective is to stop all people while the actually-existing borderwall merely hopes to slow down people crossing in order to allow them to be apprehended. Since 2006 over 700 miles of barrier fortifications were built and maintained at the cost of $49 billion USD over twenty-five years [fig. 4]. Approximately one-third of the US/Mexico frontier is walled or fenced, featuring 11 different types of wall. Each day the border has 13,300 commercial trucks cross it.

Starting in 2006 the purpose of the borderwall was to enact a limit on America, as if it could be sealed like a ziplock bag. As the Washington Post describes, “[t]he message from Congress was clear: Building a physical barrier was an acceptable and even desirable policy solution to illegal immigration.” More than a decade later, this is still the mainstream policy: And of course, candidate Trump promising campaign rallies the construction of an “impenetrable and beautiful” wall. However Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in his failed campaign, also promised a wall stating the “unsecured border with Mexico invites illegal immigrants, criminals, and terrorists to tread on American soil,” and repeating the same populist security concerns. As President, Trump tweeting that the Big Beautiful Wall will “help stop drugs, human trafficking etc,” and calling the day he signed two executive orders regarding the wall the first day of America “get[ting] back control of its borders,” implying there is no control at present. Trump goes on to opine that the wall would “help Mexico” by deterring migrants from South America passing through Mexico on their way to the United States, and would one day “thank us” for its construction. To call this borderwal acceptable, desirable or beautiful is an inherent value judgment about the functions it serves vis a vis its real, perceived and symbolic function regarding security and social engineering.

The implication is that biopower is beautiful. In the populist imaginary the Big Beautiful Wall is a site of domination over Mexico and over geography itself, where political power obliterates even nature. The populist conception of the Big Beautiful Wall is almost a utopian surrogate to the actually existing one, where the borderwall is a gleaming emblem of reified security. The first type of criticism of the Big Beautiful Wall under consideration is concerned more with the lack of pragmatism in its program. The cost and expanse of the project leaves “mainstreamers … always believed the Wall was a fantasy, a campaigning prop.” The idea of fantasy or allegorical nature of the Big Beautiful Wall as it came to life on the campaign trail is thought to be “tactical symbolism.” These pragmatic criticisms are perhaps most succinctly phrased by former Homely Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who quipped: “It makes no sense to build a 10 foot wall on top of a 10,000 foot mountain.” What these criticism all share is a tacit endorsement of the borderwall’s objectives, but a suspicion of its feasibility. In this view, the objection is less with the ethics of the borderwall than its practicality.

A second and more profound form of critiquing the Big Beautiful Wall is from an ethical perspective. Texas congressional Rep. Castro [D-El Paso] said, “[t]he future of border security lies … not [in] medieval defenses.” But in deeming the wall medieval, he is suggesting that the wall is barbaric, brutal, cruel and just plain ethically wrong, or just technological primitive? Rep. O’Rourke, [D-El Paso] goes a little deeper into ethical territory by stating: “This wall makes sense if you’re not from here … if you’re scared of Mexico and of Mexicans. It seems like a good emotional response to that fear. [But when you live here] … it seems ridiculous, shameful and embarrassing.” Perhaps some of that embarrassment and shame is that the Big Beautiful Wall risks dividing other already marginalized indigenous communities within the borderzone, numbering approximately 130,000 people along the Mexican side and 80,000 on the US side. Proposed path cuts through Tohono O'odham land, among the largest indigenous reservations. Shameful that the borderwall and patrols have influence where attempted crossings can be made, areas “likely to lead directly to increased number of deaths. […] Since shooting illegal border crossers is not an option… the bureaucratic solution… is to push them into locales where nature pulls the trigger.” From this perspective, the Big Beautiful Walls is the shameful inheritance of a global politics predicated on division and exclusion.

Unpacking the ethical considerations of walling to architects inevitably passes through German during the Cold War. Perhaps surprisingly, the idea that there is beauty to be found in the biopower is also shared by architect and prominent self-proclaimed public intellectual Rem Koolhaas. Writing in 1993 about the Inner German Border [1952-199O] [fig. 5] and the Berlin Wall [1961-1989] [fig. 6], Koolhass discovered:

The greatest surprise: the wall was heartbreakingly beautiful. Maybe after the ruins of Pompeii… it was the most purely beautiful remnant of an urban condition, breathtaking in its persistent doubleness. […] It was impossible to imagine another recent artifact with the same signifying potency.

Koolhaas’ analysis casts the wall’s function of biopolitical control as an ethical concern, where “The wall suggested that architecture’s beauty was directly proportional to its horror.” The horror Koolhaas invokes the power of architecture’s which he enumerated in a numbered collection of judgments, the most crucial of which was that the borderwall “was a very graphic demonstration of the power of architecture and some of its unpleasant consequences.” Koolhaas also states the “significance as a ‘wall’—as an object—was marginal; its impact was utterly independent of its appearance. Apparently, the lightest of objects could be randomly be coupled with the heaviest of meanings through brute force, willpower.” However, Koolhaas also found in the German case a magnificent ingenuity to the hand-dug tunnels, artisanal aircraft and ingenuous hideaways in automobiles. In regards to the Big Beautiful Wall, similar inventive subversions are to be found: catapults which toss drugs over the borderwall, ramps for jeeps and trucks to drive over.

Clearly, the architecture of the Big Beautiful Wall is implicated as being as “horror” in its own right. The poet Gloria Anzaldúa wrote of the US-Mexico borderzone as the place “where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.” These views align with activist-architects who intervene into the populist imaginary of the Big Beautiful Wall and recast it as a potentially emancipatory zone of exchange, hybridity, and ingenuity. In research performed by architects with a taste for postmodern reflexivity and postcolonial poststructuralism, the wall here is cast not as a barrier as in the populist view but, influenced by postcolonial stance in migration studies, is seen as dividing two nations and uniting a third nation around it. As explained by Ronald Rael:

there is no question about the spatial, psychological, social, and architectural repercussions of this barrier. As an architectural intervention, the wall has transformed large cities, small towns, and a multitude of cultural and economic biomes along its path, creating a Divided States of North America, defined by some as a no-man’s land band by other as a Third Nation.

No doubt informed by Koolhaas’ assertion that the Berlin Wall “was a script, effortlessly blurring divisions between tragedy, comedy, melodrama,” these architects imagine rewriting that script to create a more empowering borderzone, real and imaginary. Now turning to briefly look at emancipatory alternatives to biopolitical borderwalls. architect Teddy Cruz and political scientist Forman have lead the charge of an empowering reinvention of the borderzone happening alongside its actual construction over the past decade. Immensely influential actions by the pair as Estudio Cruz + Forman include The Political Equator, an infographic which turned into a series of workshops; their participatory, relational aesthetic intervention when they turned a drainage pipe into an official border crossing for a day; and their seminal research into recycling material from California making its way into construction in Tijuana [fig. 7 and 8]. Rather than architects, landscape architects and urbanists “decorating the mistakes of stupid planning,” with architectural interventions which only “camouflage the most pressing problems of … today.” The Big Beautiful Wall—even before Trump spoke those words—was already the focus of Cruz and Forman’s work. As they state: “to be political in our field suggests a commitment to exposing the conditions of conflict inscribe in a particular territory and the institutional mechanism that have perpetuated such conflict.” The borderwall is the ultimate institutional mechanism at play in the boderzone. In relation to the Big Beautiful Wall, Forman reminds us:

The physical barrier is one way to understand the divide that exists, somewhat arbitrarily, between the two countries. But it’s important to know that the border is reproduced in multiple ways—physically, socially, and psychologically—in other parts of both countries. The border has always been a way of reinforcing antagonism that doesn’t always exist. In many ways, it’s artificial. But it has been hardened into norm.

MADE Collective and Ronald Rael no doubt are influenced by Cruz+ Forman’s influential call for “[c]reative practices need to infiltrate existing institutions in order to transform them from the inside out, producing new aesthetic categories that problematize the relationship between the social, the political, and the formal.” Both their MADE and Rael’s projects are informed by this seeping into the institutions of the borderwall to transform it from the inside out. MADE Collective has submitted an official application to use a portion of the wall’s budget to instead build a transportation network and remove the wall. They describe the Big Beautiful Wall as “more a signifier of status than a barrier.” Ignoring the barrier potential of the wall, MADE instead suggest creating a new country of Otra in the borderzone, bound together by the Hyperloop transportation system [fig. 9]. Ronald Rael has also contributed immensely to the discourse on reinventing the Big Beautiful Wall. In nearly a decade of research and research-creation, summed up in his recently published Borderwall as Architecture, which Rael describes as a “protest against the wall—a protest that employs the tools of the discipline of architecture manifested as a series of designs that challenge the intrinsic architectural element of a wall charged by its political context.” Rael offers a satirical detournement of border fortification design, offering instead of a barrier the ability to share a burrito through the wall, play a game of volleyball [“wall-y ball,” fig. 10] over the wall, divide nations with green infrastructure projects or enjoy a gentle teeter-totter experience within the structure of the wall itself [fig. 11].

The populist call lead by Trump to transmutate the Big Beautiful Wall into reality is underway. A tender has been offered to build two types of prototypes—one of reinforced concrete and one of materials of the designer’s choosing. Both must be 30-feet tall though 18-feet could be acceptable. The Big Beautiful Wall must be “aesthetically pleasing in color,” at least on the American side. Ten selected prototypes will be announced this June by the United States Department of Customs and Border Protection, each to be built in 30-foot segments in the desert to be tested with ramming, cutting, ramping and climbing. Secretary of Homeland Securirty John Kelly has explained, “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall or physical barrier from sea to shining sea,” but it seems inevitable that more borderwall—perhaps up to $21.6 billion-worth—will be built. In 1989 before they danced in Berlin there were 15 border walls on the face of the earth while today there are 70. The Berlin Wall, the Israeli Defensive Fence and especially the imaginary Big Beautiful Wall are all better walls than the one which exists between America and Mexico. The Big Beautiful Wall is the symbolic spectre of the USA’s might, a dematerialized boogeyman, the projection of total control in a realm where total control is impossible. A deeper understanding of this typology is needed to understand the forces of biopower within global flows. Tensions present even in the imaginary border wall of the future are not just about two specific countries but the tensions between the core and periphery itself. In this regard, the shadow of the Big Beautiful Wall falls on us all.

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mode7rap · 8 years ago

Text

genoboost reviews the Final Fantasy VII commercial

via Game Music 4 All

I hate Final Fantasy VII.

Well, I love Final Fantasy VII, but don't tell Final Fantasy VII I said that. FFVII doesn't deserve my love, but I often find myself thinking about all the good times we had together. We laughed, we cried, we bitched about Cait Sith. Those were the days. But it was such a toxic relationship. I can never go back.

It's going to take a few more therapy sessions before I'm comfortable digging deeper into that. Today, I simply want to discuss a small portion of the very rich meal that is Final Fantasy VII. There are a lot of layers to this RPG onion, and I want to focus solely on the dry, dusty, useless onion skin, slowly rotting beneath the produce section lights. I'll be dissecting Square's game changing game commercial which appeared on US television ahead of the games stateside release. That's not a joke.

How did we all think Final Fantasy VII was so great? Clearly opinions have splintered in the 20 years since the game's release. It's hard to stay unbiased after many years worth of extraneous FFVII games, movies, and more games, and anime shorts. It's now pretty hazy just exactly what convinced me to love this game so much in the first place. Then I saw the original commercial again. My very sudden and brand new hypothesis is that the marketing blitz put on by Sony and Square (now Square-Enix) made sure we thought this game was going to kick every ass. It did. The commercials that aired constantly on cable television also made sure that viewers had no idea what the 'game' part of this game was.

So it's time to dissect a thirty second long and twenty year old commercial. This advertisement was the first glimpse of Final Fantasy for much of the US, except for nerds like me that is. That glimpse made Final Fantasy VII look like one bad ass mother fucker of an action movie, er, action game. It's a game. You can play on the "Play Station." Somehow.

What do you even do in this game? It would appear to be some sort of motorcycle riding, helicopter chasing, explosion causing and/or preventing type action game. Maybe you get to play as an ass kicking, motorcycle riding protagonist that is also a soldier of fortune, as mentioned in the commercial! Mystery solved.

I don't know what's happening here, but it doesn't matter because I'm dead now.

Actually, I think the Soldier of fortune is the only thing this commercial gets right about Final Fantasy VII. But only if I'm being generous and assume when the voice over said "soldier" he meant SOLDIER.

It's hard to think back to a time where we didn't know about sephiroth, JENOVA, and Cloud, the only three characters that very briefly appear in the commercial. Each with a haircut sillier than the last. None of these highly integral characters are established in any way. It's just some insane fever dream. Was that a monster? Did it explode? Does CG hair have to look this ridiculous?

Absolutely.

I know I come hard at Final Fantasy VII like the old, jaded gamer I am, but back in '97 I was just as enamored by it as any other kid that got their kicks from playing Chrono Trigger and FFIII, I mean VI, I mean, ah fuck it. Square knew exactly what a young American gamer wanted to see. Explosions, revenge, motorcycles, soldiers of fortune, more revenge, another explosion, and another explosion and revenge, plus it's a video game!

This isn't a commercial for a hundred hour, story driven RPG from Japan (this is, and it gets me pretty damn hyped). This is a commercial for a high budget Hollywood action movie. It has more in common with trailers for Men in Black and The Fifth Element, the latest sci-fi blockbusters circa '97. This was long before Lord of the Rings made everyone very very familiar with the Fantasy genre. Back in 1997, no one in the US cared about grass or trees or magic or elves or none of that shit. Those were good times. Anyway, the folks behind advertising Final Fantasy VII knew what's up. They showed off nothing but the heavily industrial, very metallic side of Final Fantasy VII. Cannons, helicopters, motorcycles. This was some epic futuristic realism here. No magic airships, no swords, no riding on big dumb chickens! 'Wark' your ass on out of here you stupid chocobo, or is it 'kweh' now? Go 'kweh' yourself!

"Did you unlock the motorcycle?"

"Not Quite."

Give Square some credit where it's due though, twenty years later, every major game release is marketed this way. Only cut scenes, no game play footage, and only the vaguest half paragraph outline of the plot. Makes me nostalgic for the storyline to Bosconian. Make sure your way dope commercial includes anything that would be cool to own or pilot, as long as it's a machine and not an animal, such as a very large, very colorful, very inbred bird.

There isn't a single company fool enough to include actual gameplay in the commercial for said game. Some commercials these days don't include any images from the game at all. Even Nintendo themselves cut that shit out a few console generations ago. Well, Nintendo still tries to shove a little gameplay footage in at the end of their commercials. Unfortunately, Nintendo's stubborn respect for consumers makes for terrible marketing. Not to mention the incredible difficulty in conveying fun game play to a passive audience. Just make some jokes, or throw some babes at me, and/or a few explosions and I'm in! Buy me Bonestorm or go to hell!

Square-Enix has made a ton of missteps since the release of FFVII, which lead to the name Square-Enix itself, and my endless confusion on whether to call them Square, or Square-Enix when referring to the company when it was called Square, or was it Square LTD, I don't think it was Square EA yet, or was it EA Square in the US and Square EA in Japan… Ah fuck that too.

Actually (fixes glasses) the full name is…

As I was saying, Square whatever has had some misfires in their long and expensive history, but damn were they on the cutting edge of logically baffling but ridiculously effective commercials.

If I'm generous, I could understand that there could be some difficulty in explaining a 70 hour epic within a 30 second teaser. Ungenerously, since this is a commercial after all. Please be skeptical of anyone selling you anything. Please? This is 30 seconds of random images and blatant lies created solely in an effort to take your money. Square got my money. Don't let them get to you too!

I'm not sure if this is the first RPG to be marketed to popcorn shoveling mongrels and not the elite console gamer class that knew what a JRPG was, or, as we called them at the time. RPGs. We didn't need more specific definitions because all console RPGs came from Japan. American companies made Bass Fishing and Bubsy, and a game starring the fucking president's cat. Who cares! Until FPS games gained some traction, US game developers would do their best to serve up nice bland plates of whatever Japan created first.

Despite Square's best efforts, and explosions, the most insane thing about this commercial was the ending.

:Record scratch

Appearing in the final moments of the commercial was the title "Final Fantasy VII." Wait a minute! I know what Final Fantasy is! I know exactly what Final Fantasy is! Hold on, where did four, five, and six go!?

I had already played Final Fantasy VI, although we called it Final Fantasy III back in my day. Whatever this commercial was that my eyeballs were subjected to was certainly unlike any previous Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is about wizards and spell casting and swords and a bunch of numbers going up, sometimes down. You collect money, which you can use to buy new weapons, and you can find treasure, which is hopefully new weapons. There's just loads of text and menus. Honestly, it's all just text and menus. The point being, that there ain't none of that in this commercial, and we all know damn well there is plenty of that shit in the game. Conversely, I think every exploding building, crashing meteor, or giant energy weapon in the game is shown off in this commercial.

Before I watched this commercial several dozen times in order to form this deep and absolutely necessary analysis, I decided to make a list of a few words and phrases that come to mind when I think about Final Fantasy VII. Play along at home. Just close your eyes and think of some of your most cherished memories with this very ridiculous game.

Giant Swords

Armageddon

Bigger swords

Corporate greed

This guy are sick

Leveling Up

Great Music

Unlikable characters

Huge world

Huge monsters

Double crossing

Ancient stuff

Fancy wigs and dresses

Cait Sith… Fuck you Cait Sith! I never wanted you on my team in the first place you traitorous, plot advancing piece of-

Okay, I should stop there, but I think that's a good synopsis of FFVII to be honest.

Now time to live blog this ephemeral seizure of a commercial.

There's an evil empire.

So evil it's a whole evil planet?

Giant cannon!

Modern day helicopters

Modern day motorcycle, is this Terminator?

The world is in danger! So it might be Terminator!

To Aerith: "Come with me if you want to live." No wait!

More cannons! These cannons shoot lasers!

It can shoot in this single direction though.

Was that a monster?

Quiet down in there!… You!

Everything is so shiny

At least this evil empire has some showmanship.

Great graphics!

...for the time.

There's seven of these!?

Another record scratch

This is a video game!?!?

and it's on the playstation!?

Whaaaaa…

As you can see, a few major elements of Final Fantasy VII seem to be lacking in the commercial. In a game with nine different playable characters, each with plenty of backstory, we see Cloud's dumb hair for a second, and Sephiroth staring down a robot. I remember staring at the print ad of this scene and having not a single clue what I was even looking at. Did you notice any swords in this commercial? Catch someone using a spear or inaccurately enormous shuriken shaped boomerang? There wasn't even magic. No magic in a game called Final FANTASY. No feathers, and not a single blade of grass.

If this commercial is to be believed (and who am I to not believe the very people who are trying to take my money) then this is pretty much James Bond, Blade Runner, and Armageddon, but playable. I wouldn't be shocked if this blonde haired soldier of fortune was voiced by Bruce Willis himself. Yippee ki yay Sephiroth. It's time to save the world from lasers and cannons and meteors and all kinds of other crazy crap.

Somehow…

Oh, I almost forgot, this game commercial doesn't feature any game play. Maybe it was an oversight. It's certainly not necessary to include gameplay footage. Why, Square gave us all the information we need to understand the gameplay, right in this very commercial, if you just look closely enough!

I can easily imagine the control scheme for this wild ride.

X = Motorcycle

Triangle = Revenge

Square = Explosions

Circle = Explosion based Revenge

L1+R1 = Run Away

This lack of gameplay footage is what changed video game commercials forever (except Nintendo). Nintendo was trying their hardest to show off some quality games back in the mid 90's, but that integrity lost them valuable MTV commercial real estate. Square and Sony on the other hand, began to create commercials that were more like existential references to the games in the PlayStation library, rather than provide actual details or information about why you should purchase the product featured. Nintendo clearly wanted to emulate these highly effective commercials, all while still conveying the inherent fun of Nintendo games. This meant that Nintendo became stranded in some horrible middle ground. Wanting edgy commercials with a bunch of crazy crap happening, while still conveying the style and quality of the gameplay. Don't forget to wedge some game footage in there somehow.

As reference, here is a 1996 Nintendo commercial. Coincidentally, I chose the commercial for Super Mario RPG, the final Square produced game for a Nintendo system for nearly a decade.

Dammit Nintendo, it's like the head of your PR department is my mom. SO LAME. This commercial needs it's own analysis. I'm a life long Nintendo supporter through and through, but I have made no bones about their inability to create engaging commercials. Nintendo has been getting their asses kicked in the marketing department ever since Sega said 'Nintendon't.' Luckily Nintendo's games often speak for themselves in terms of quality game play. Of course, you would have to purchase the game to know that. Oh the irony! Every Nintendo commercial feels like the boxart to Phalanx. Baffling and unintuitive.

In fact, here's another one from 2005!

Even after many years in this brave new world of logic free commercials, Nintendo still slides in that gameplay footage. Will they never learn?

Conclusion

Hey Square, I love all the convoluted stories, convoluted hair, and pompous cut scenes, but I also like the part where I rummage through menus to equip insane materia combinations, or just simply stealing from as many different enemies as possible. This commercial, and the frenzy for Final Fantasy VII upon launch reinforced those former attributes, sending Square into an anti-gameplay spiral that we've only begun to unravel. In the immediate aftermath of FFVII, Square gave us both the amazing 'cinematic RPG' Parasite Eve, as well as the bankruptcy inducing Final Fantasy The Spirits Within.

Now they go by Square Enix, a little wiser, and a little less bold. They still waver between quality game play and an overzealous cut scenes, second only to the Metal Gear series (which also made Konami hemorrhage money, hmm).

Next FFVII anniversary, I'm going to review the Knight of the Round (AKA the longest fucking thing in video games ever) in the same amount of time that the animation of Knight of the Round takes to play out.

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