#i mean like everything in the entire movie it's definitely a parody of that specific character design trope

[softgrungeprophet]

Shrek is the only good use of the "makeup and eyelashes = female animal/monster" trope

[creekwritersblood]

Today I would like to talk about the various kind of Authors that fits the category Writers.

Feature Writer: Usually is the one who write articles on magazines or newspapers.

Novelist: The one who writes Novels of any genre from Horror, to Romantic.

Poet: The one who writes poems about any topic in its mind.

Blogger: The one who writes Blogs.

Screenwriter: The one who writes the Screenplay for movies, TV Series, video games including acting instructions and scene directions.

Stage writer: The one who writes a Theatre play.

FanFiction writer: The one who writes about Fandoms.

Short Stories writer: The one who mainly write short stories.

Copywriter: The one who writes texts for advertisements or Publicity material.

Starting from this definitions, actually all of those can be considered Writers because to write each and every kind of thing like that Imagination, Knowledge, Studies and Research are needed. In whatever field you will write, you will always find those common elements and here’s why:

Imagination: Is needed because whatever you will write about, a True Crime or a Review of a certain book, you need to visualize the facts happened in a certain situation; if you cannot visualize those yourself, how your reader is suppose to? So this is fundamental, at least to me, I mean, if I read a True Crime article I need to know what happened and if I can see it in my head it can sort out a better reaction.

Knowledge: Know the topic you will write about. To start, write about things you know to have a better come-out.

Studies and Research: Glossaries will be your bestfriends on your travel in the topic you will talk about in your article/book. It doesn’t matter what you will write about, is always adviced to research a bit of words for the specific topic to be more precise and have a better know-how to explain certain things to your reader.

The sub-categories:

Feature Writer:

True Crime: disappearance, murder, or sexual assault, or the collective acts of a single criminal, such as a serial killer.

The first rule to apply to write about True Crime stories for Articles or Books is Do Not Lie on facts. True Crime Stories are something Serious and they MUST be Respected from head to toe. If you want to write about a True crime story, is it an article or an entire Novel, never forget to pay respect for the victims and respect the story itself without changing it. You must be the storyteller, the one who tells facts and keep the reader with you in the travel from the first letter to the last closing dot.

Lighter Topics: There are a lot of things you can write about.

You can write articles on food, writing, design, products to buy, products to NOT buy, everything you can think about, can be written down.

Specific Topics: You can write about specific topics like Medical issues, College issues, Hair styles, As for lighter topics, Everything you can think about can be written down.

Novelist:

Fiction: The one who writes about a non-real fact, or at least, takes inspiration on something really happen, but not related to reality.

Action and adventure, Fantasy: as the words say, they can be set in an unexisting World completely created from the Writer himself, or can take place in real places with fictional Creatures and Characters.

Comedy: Usually is a fiction full of fun, meant to entertain the reader itself and cause him a luaghter as the lines goes on. It can be part of other genres too like Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Parody and many others.

Crime and mystery: Usually Crimes and Mysteries created by the Writer himself.

Horror: Stories intended to pass a shiver to the reader, transporting him into a world, real or fictional, filled with monsters and Creatures that usually are the antagonists.

Sci-Fi: Stories placed into fictional worlds populated by extraterrestrial creatures and spieces.

Recipes: They can be created taking inspiration from the real world, creating fictional stories around those

Non Finction: The one who writes about real facts, existing things related to the real world.

True Crime: As for the Articles, a True Crime story is a tale where is told a real fact happened without changing the facts, with real people.

Recipes: Yes, Recipes, infact, also those kind of books can be novels, the writer can talk about plates and write about the creators of those.

Autobiography: Is a tale of the life the Writer himslef lived.

Poet:

Haiku: This kind of Poetry comes from the Western part of the world, Japan. Is usually very short (three lines) and the first and the third lines have five syllables, while the second has seven. They can be written to recall a mood or a moment.

Free verse: It is considered modern poetry, they do not follow a metrical rule and they do not have to rhyme necessarly.

Sonnet: This is a classic form of poetry, made famous mostly by William Shakespeare. Their origin is in Italy, created by Petrarch. Sonnets are typically following the scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

Acrostic: This kind of Poem is different, because Each capital Letter of Each Line, in the end forms a Message.

Villanelle: Originated in France, it has to be composed by 19 lines, following the scheme; ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA, this type of poem only has two rhyming sounds. Plus, there is a lot of repetition throughout the villanelle. Line one will be repeated in lines six, 12 and 18; and line three will be repeated in lines nine, 15 and 19. So although this takes out the extra work of having to write 19 individual lines, the real challenge is to make meaning out of those repeated lines!

Limerick: Funy and sometimes also rude, were made popular by Edward Lear in the 19th century. They have a set rhyme scheme of AABBA, with lines one, two and five all being longer in length than lines three and four.

Ode: The ode is one of the oldest forms of poetry and believed to be born in ancient Greece. The Word ode comes from the greek word aedein wich means to sing or chant, originally were performed with musical instruments. It is written to praise a person or a Divinity, an event or a thing.

Elegy: It doesn’t have rules and have as a subject Death. Usually they are used to remember loved ones that has passed away.

Ballad: They are usually formed by four lines and follow the rhyme scheme ABAB or ABCB.

Blogger: A Blog can talk about everything you like and there is no genre to follow, let your fantasy go wild!

Screen writer and Stage writer: A play - written by the Stage Writer - is a performance while a film is a visual art.

Their main focus is Dialogue, but they differs when we start to talk about the mediums used for a play and a Screenplay; the first rely only on characters lines and is a bit more contained using only few sets, while the second use visuals and camera angles to deepen the story itself and is a bit more opened because of the use of Special effects and various sets.

FanFiction writer: FanFiction does not have rules of themselves, they give you the possibility to pull in an original Character and create a little story based on a yet affirmed fandom. Is a great exercise, because you can test your fantasy, pulling all the characters, or just one of your choice in a different AU that can be the real world, or another fandom, you can adjust those as you prefer.

This is the start of many writers and I must say is a great one.

We all have a dream in life and mine has always been become a writer, so I started writing fanfictions first and I still do at times not gonna lie -lol- I personally would advice those to initate, there are a lot of places to publish them and they can be a great opportunity to start making a name of your own.

Short Stories Writer: As the name itself, they can be written from a minimum of two pages on a maximum of ten, in my opinion, others consider a short story from a minimum of two pages to a maximum of fifty, Think each one has his own objective look on it. As for Novels they can be on everything you want Fictional or not.

Copywriter: This is something a bit different from the others, because, Copywriters usually write based on products they must sell and advertize, so there is no other genre apart the Non fiction one.

Whatever kind of Writer you want to be, don’t hold back and be it!

[lsobelevans]

Horror tropes? In my Roswell, New mexico? It’s more likely than you think!

In this essay I will...

...be mentioning a few horror/thriller movies and while nothing explicitly gory or scary will be shown in this post, those movies definitely contain scenes and themes that can be disturbing/scary/triggering, do your researches if you’ve got doubts!

...be focusing on the Maria and Alex road-trip, from the moment the car breaks down to the last scene with Travis’ twin. I’m probably going to be led to briefly mention the other scenes that are intertwined with this arc (the echo date and the Planet 7 Kyle and Isobel scene, as well as the marlex car drive when I feel like it is relevant). 

...be approaching specific themes that are used in the scenes that compose this little arc and also more general ones like sound, editing, cinematography and color. 

... be reaching a lot. I do not think everything I will be mentioning is 100% thought-out and voluntary (although you never know). But I’m a firm believer that in filmmaking, yes even inside a CW show, the symbolism comes through subconsciously. So like, maybe they didn’t mean to use corn field as a mark for transition, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that this symbolism works with the story they’re telling and for the journey the characters are in that moment. Additionally, lighting, decor and costumes are always a choice, just like the camera doesn’t position itself randomly, someone’s behind and thinking of the composition of shots that, even if it’s in a basic way, has meaning.

... be starting chronologically but I’ll also make jumps backward and forward, grasping on themes when they come up. Ok, then, let’s dive in! 

This episode references and uses a lot of the iconic mechanisms of the horror movie genre. Alex and Maria’s comfortable road trip atmosphere, open hearted conversation in the car, breaks at the same time as the car itself breaks. The camera, steady so far, the shots following a well known pattern of shot/counter-shot, becomes more unpredictable and shakier and suddenly we’re out of the car, and bam, large shot. 

From the moment they’re out of the car, you won’t be able to see the horizon. Maria and Alex are stuck in a corn field, and they’re stuck in the frame. 

Then poof, Travis appears out of nowhere, accompanied with a pang of music, frightening us and them. Well, more exactly, it cuts on a shot that we’ve seen before without Travis, now with Travis, which gives us the appearing out of nowhere effect. 

Alex says it best.

Well now they’re stuck with a strange guy with an axe, and in a corn field 😬

Hey, have you seen he’s got an axe??? or do you need a close-up???

Okay, this scene ends there. So, let’s take a break and talk about cornfields. There’s many examples of horror movies making use of a field of corn as a location, famously Children of the Corn (1984), Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1995) Signs (2002), that last one also involving, you guessed it, aliens. 

Screenshots from the Signs trailer.

Corn fields are strongly associated with rurality, especially rural America. More largely, they can represent renewal, fertility or abundance. In the contrary, they can be seen as a very ominous location due to their immensity, a labyrinth in which you can’t see very far away and from which you’ll have trouble coming out. 

Although I’m pretty sure Maria’s chase in the cornfield is more of a reference to The Shining (1980) it reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies Tom à la ferme (2013), in which Tom is basically held hostage in rural Canada. The corn field chase is a turning point, the last of Tom's attempts to escape. 

Cornfields apparently also often imply scarecrows, which are inherently scary in my opinion but we’ll talk about it more later. 

The next scene takes place inside of Travis' cabin. 

The lighting here is pretty low, the light coming from a few small sources, creating a lot of shadows. The main color is a greenish/yellow which can be associated with nature and earth, rurality, dirty, suffocating. If we look at it, the color scheme of the entire road trip is very much following this pattern of browns/yellows/greens because of the cornfield and the color of the characters costumes (the exception being Maria’s truck which is a bright red). In opposition, the scenes that are intertwined are either blue and orange for Max and Liz or a lot of pink/blues/purples for Isobel and Kyle in planet 7 (bi bi bi).

The cabin is messy, supposedly reflecting the state of the owner’s mind. We get a nice close-up on meat + a knife and all of the creepy skins on the walls. Also, it’s noticeable that from this moment on, the camera is shakier, we experience different angles too. 

We are given many visual clues that something is wrong. 

I’m gonna pass on the sound of the sound of the cow parodying a werewolf + the vampire diaries inside joke. 

Btw, if the fact that Travis names his cows -- that he skins for a living -- like human women isn’t enough for you to think mmmm. we are in danger. Well, don’t worry. The cw spells it out for you!!

We know Alex! We got contextual clues!

Right after this, Alex and Maria make another direct reference to being in a horror movie situation. 

ALEX: This is why I don’t like horror films. The gay guy always dies first.

MARIA: ???? 

ALEX: Or... second. Okay, that’s fair. That look, that’s fair. 

I think this bit is interesting, because not only does it denounce an horror movie cliché (the black person of the cast dies first, the queer person is second) but also in this situation I believe it can be see as kind of a callout on the fandom’s behavior that i’m not gonna spell out for you but yeah. Fellow queer people, don’t forget you’re not the only one who is sometimes badly/unfairly represented. 

Moving on. In the next scene, Alex is searching the cabin for clues, and we are also given some about Travis. 

Either he has a twin brother or he’s got a framed picture of himself on his wall. Oh, and he’s military.

Then Travis startles Alex and plays a little bit of banjo, which is a good excuse to stop and talk about music. The show uses a lot of diegetic music aka music that is present in the universe of the story, that the characters can also hear. It justify the use of said music and it ties the audio with the picture.

The banjo already is heard at the very beginning of the arc during a cut from the planet 7 scene to the road trip scene. We get a few notes that indicate a change of scenery and that helps smooth up the transition, and I’m pretty sure it was also supposed to be diegetic music coming from Maria’s radio. The banjo, like the corn field, is super linked with rurality and rural America (again!)

Another reference of the banjo in horror/thriller would be Deliverance (1972).

I can’t not think of this movie when I hear banjo unfortunately. 

The way Travis plays, aggressively bad, and while singing I Think We’re Alone Now, is supposed to make you think about that scene in The Umbrella Academy be quite unsettling, another point for isolation horror. 

So sweet of Travis to attack Alex with a guitar, and then a smol knife, and not with the axe <3. 

Then we’ve got a traveling zoom-in (or equivalent I’m not sure it isn’t a steady-cam here but the effect is the same) on Maria. This kind of effect can feel a little bit over-the-top and dramatic, in a old genre movie kind of way. It is usually used to bring the audience in, make it feel like you’re evolving in the same universe as the characters (here you’re walking toward Maria). In a scene where you should feel scared, it can be a mean to make you feel more engaged, as well as underlining Maria’s expression, her fear. In my opinion, this is also a way to tell you that from now on, Maria is the main character of this arc, the one that you will be following after the commercial break (that occurs right after) and making it more suspenseful. 

The scene after the break is the start of the corn-field chase. Travis steps out of the cabin, the cuts are faster, many close-shots, some even out of focus, that accelerate the rhythm, and a long fade-in of a new song: a modern, electronic song (Kim Petra’s Close You Eyes) completely in opposition with the acoustic banjo and with the atmosphere of the scene, which makes it strange and makes you think oh, what a weird choice! (at least it did for me lol). The lyrics, however, go very well with the scene. 

I feel it coming on You've got nowhere to run There's no way you'll make it out alive

Yep. 

We find out right after that the music is in fact diegetic but for Isobel and Kyle, it’s another use of music to ease a transition between 2 scenes that are different in every possible way. 

Now, the corn-field chase. As I mentioned before, I believe it’s a direct reference to The Shining’s ending chase scene where Jack Torrance chases his son Danny through a vegetal labyrinth with an axe. 

From the shots to the lighting (from behind or on the side, making the characters look like silhouettes) both scenes are very similar. Also, Travis is styled like Jack Nicholson ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh look, Michael’s here to save the day!

Oh well, guess not. 

Yeah, in this scene, and like we’ve been shown before, Maria is going to be the one that saves everyone. The racist cliché of the black character dying first in a horror movie is reversed, Maria is the last one standing. The scarecrow (that looked conveniently a lot like Maria) is supposed to play in favor of the bad guy, it’s a scary element, creating confusion and unease, but here the character decides to basically take it into her own hands and bend the rules. This character says i’m not that archetype, and she’s going to be using the horror movie tools against itself. 

Lastly, the final horror movie recurring theme that I’m going to talk about is the twin/the double. 

Yes, twins is a spooky tool used in horror movie because their similarities make them unsettling, uncanny. 

There’s also the idea that if one were to replace the other, you wouldn’t be able to tell. The impostor is a very scary concept that Roswell has also dealt with before. 

I can’t be the only one that has been traumatized by that halloween special of the Simpsons where Bart has an evil twin... 

It’s the last twist of the arc, there is a bad!Travis and a good!Travis. The bad one kept the other locked-up somewhere and had taken his place. 

It’s particularly interesting for Roswell that has a history with twins/doppelgänger, and that since the original show. It is a clear instance of in-world foreshadowing here! (howdy)

My conclusion about all this is that the people who worked on 2x06 had a great time building the episode and it shows, while also making it enjoyable to watch and yeah, we love to see it! 

[centrally-unplanned]

Haruhi Suzumiya’s Limited Shelf Life

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, an adaptation of a light novel series of the same name, is a 2006 anime who’s ascent into stardom occurred with unmatched speed, but in my opinion its staying power as a “relevant” anime experienced an equally rapid descent. Most people would point fingers at the legendary - just unparalleled in its audacity and “fuck all y’all” vibes - Endless Eight arc of its second season. Others, such as this quite fun video essay on Endless Eight which partially inspired this essay, point to the lack of light novel source material dragging down the possibility of more content to keep up momentum. I’m not going to make a numbers or data-based argument on how the Haruhi franchise actually performed; instead, after rewatching the Haruhi anime recently I feel the show itself was built to have a limited shelf-life from the get-go, and its decline should be no surprise.

Haruhi, to briefly summarize, is the story of Kyon, a witty-but-average highschooler who gets tsundere-roped into being the assistant to the titular Haruhi Suzumiya, a bored maniac constantly trying to drum up paranormal hijinks for kicks who is, unbeknownst to herself, secretly God who’s boredom if left unchecked will destroy the universe. That might sound like a pretty zany plot premise, but it has nothing on the presentation of the show itself. The ‘first’ episode of Haruhi aired, with no context or lead in, as an obviously garbage-tier magical-girl show ‘home-made’ by the actual characters in the show, with fourth wall-breaks and editing mishaps aplenty. And while the next episode proceeded to be the proper episode 1, the whole show airs entirely out of order, with characters referring explicitly to past events that the audience has not seen. Which all leads into the final episode of the first season being chronologically...episode 6. Pieced together afterwards, the show has a complete arc from the episodes 1 to 6 that were peppered throughout the broadcast order, and episodes 7 to 14 are one-off stories that enhance the characters and showcase the (subtle) changes resulting from that original arc.

This presentation was a *huge* part of the success of the show, primarily because it contributed so much to the Drama of it all. Love it or hate you had something to talk about, and the puzzle of what was actually going on - particularly after the first episode - pushed the 2ch thread comment counts into the Haruhi-blessed heavens. It wasn’t just a gimmick though - what it did was make a good show out of, well, not-very-good source material. 

Haruhi in broadcast order presents a sort of arc mystery in that how you see Kyon & Haruhi act around each other changes as the timeline jumps around, and that answer to “why?” is slowly revealed to you (spoiler alert, it's fundamentally romance, but it is well done). It gives that finale a ton of impact, and given how well you know the characters means you are really invested in their relationship at that point. But in chronological order...well that conclusion is a bit rushed, isn’t it? 6 episodes to care about a romance, half of the run-time of which is spent on the 3 other main characters besides Kyon and Haruhi? And then those later episodes, more than half the season, are just one-offs with no narrative. Airing chronologically would be a bad way to structure the show, for sure - but that is exactly how the books go! They are decently executed but jeez are they fluffy beyond the first novel, which tells that tight 6 episode starting arc. 

The show’s first season even acknowledges this, even in its later filler, by jumping around in what they actually adapt. One of Haruhi’s best episodes is episode 12, “Live Alive”, which features the stunningly-animated “God Knows” musical performance, but also ends on an intimate moment between Haruhi & Kyon where Haruhi lets slip a bit of growth in seeing what emotional value doing things for others can hold over always chasing her own myopic desires. It’s a great way to set up her slow-burn evolution, so it works well as lead-in to the finale (which is when it broadcasts). That is why Kyoto Animation chose to adapt that scene... from the depths of Book 6!! They skipped over several novels of content to pull that story out, because they needed it - as the rest of the source material is often filler.

Even the comedic chops of the show, its other strength, often exist in the first season despite the source material, not because of it. The seams actually start to show in season 1 itself, which has a few clunker episodes in its runtime. One of the comedic underpinnings of the show is how it parodies sci-fi anime & light novel elements, making fun of how esoterically nonsensical they can get. In one of the early episodes, when one of the crew - Mikuru - reveals herself to be a time traveller sent from the future to ‘protect the timeline from Haruhi’s power’ or whatever, her explanation is just completely skipped over by our point-of-view character in Kyon, with every other word bled together in a montage sequence as the camera spins around the scene, to highlight how silly the *mechanics* of the powers of these characters are to think about. It's definitely a great gag - which makes it very odd when, in episode 7, the characters spend, and I counted, *4 minutes* explaining over static shots of the characters how the mechanics of the paranormal villain-of-the-week operated. Its has a wider point, the show isn’t incompetent, but its jarring given how earlier the show told you so stridently that these kinds of details won’t matter. But that story is from book 3, it's what the source material becomes, so they can only go so far to fix it.

All of these problems just compounded on themselves when they made additional content, as at that point they had already mined the source material for the arc-nuggets it had and only the detritus remained. Remember that hilariously-bold opening episode, of a magical-girl homemade trainwreck of a film I mentioned? The one that is so funny precisely because you have no context for it, such that your confusion just heightens the humor while you also somehow learn so much about the characters you have never met via the bold characterization? Want to watch *five episodes* about them making that film, which you have already seen and is in the end nothing but a punchline? No? Then 30% of season 2 won’t have much to offer you, since that is what they did - because that smash-cut opening gag doesn’t exist in the source material, it instead gets a whole book devoted to it. For sure other stuff happens in those episodes, it isn't terrible - but it fundamentally lacks the stroke of genius of that season 1 opening, to trust in the audience the way they did to go along for the ride.

Endless Eight obviously didn’t help the show maintain popularity, and the movie is pretty decent, but there was no escaping the fundamental problem; namely that everything after Season 1 is fundamentally niche. It appeals if you like this specific genre of show, and these specific characters. Which is fine, but that can never be the Most Popular Show around, that market size is capped. The moment Haruhi the show had to keep going beyond that first season, it had nowhere to go but down. 

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

The Princess Bride: Genre and Themes

“Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…”

Within the first few minutes of the film, The Princess Bride firmly places itself into a very specific genre.  The Grandfather uses the above phrase very early in the movie in an attempt to sell the Grandson on the book after his skeptical reaction to the title.  With these words, and with the film that follows, The Princess Bride does whatever it can to tell its audience that it is a fantasy story, a fairy-tale.  There’s giants and shrieking eels and Miracle Pills that raise the mostly-dead, and it all connects due to an all-powerful true love.

You couldn’t get more fairy-tale if you tried.

And yet, I’d be hard-pressed to describe this as just a fantasy movie.

The problem with The Princess Bride, if you could call it a problem at all, is simply that instead of seeming like only one genre, The Princess Bride is almost too many.  It’s got the wit and dry delivery of a fast-paced comedy, the swashbuckling nature of an adventure film, and the passion of a romance.  It’s got a little bit of everything, to the point where, as I mentioned in our first article, the marketers of the film really didn’t know what to do with it.

Typically, a movie is sold partially on its genre, or genres, since very few films can claim to only belong to one.  A winning combination of star power, director clout and genre brings in an audience, who, knowing these elements, has an inkling of what to expect.  To quote Lessons from the Screenplay’s video: ‘When Harry Met Sally — Breaking Genre Conventions’:

“Genre is a set of expectations the audience has when they walk into a particular kind of movie.”

The video goes on to quote Robert McKee’s book, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting:

“The genre sophistication of filmgoers presents the writer with the critical challenge: He must not only fulfill audience anticipation, or risk their confusion and disappointment, but he must lead their expectations to fresh, unexpected moments, or risk boring them”

“The challenge is to keep convention but avoid cliche.”

That’s a lot easier said than done.

And in a film like this, containing so many genres that it’s a little challenging to pin down the ‘main’ ones, it’s important to try to figure out which audience expectations were supposed to be met.  Only then can we figure out if the film did so successfully.

That’s the object of today’s article: starting with the easy ones.  Let’s take a look. (Spoilers below!)

So, The Princess Bride, by nature of being a fairy-tale, is a fantasy story.

When you boil it down, ‘fantasy’ as a genre is just one that contains magical or fantastical elements, and in that case, The Princess Bride definitely fits the bill.  

While not quite reaching the levels of fantasy-realism of Ladyhawke, it is distinctly less ‘fantastical’ than films like Labyrinth, existing somewhere in the middle: not realistic by any means, but closer to the realm of recognizable reality than other fantasy films of the day.  Still, with the inclusion of things like Miracle Max’s miracle pill, and Inigo Montoya’s dead father managing to guide his sword, The Princess Bride firmly cements itself into the realm of fantasy by containing events that are unbelievable in any other world.

This is the genre that’s the easiest to place The Princess Bride into, due to the very simple ‘sword and sorcery’ elements that are vital to the plot.  It’s one of the main selling points of the story, to both the Grandson in the framing device, and the audience.  As such, like I said, there has to be audience expectations within the story that have to be met: there’s probably going to be a brave hero who saves the princess, there will be magic, and an exciting climax, featuring fights against the odds, quests, and explorations of this world and its use of fantastical elements.  Other expectations, especially for ‘fairy tale’ style fantasies would be a pretty simple one: a happy ending.

So, does The Princess Bride deliver?

More on that in a minute.  See, The Princess Bride isn’t only a fantasy film: it’s an adventure story too.

Once Buttercup is kidnapped, the story kicks off into a swashbuckling direction, with sword fights, revenge, and journeys through the Fire Swamp.  Every step in the journey from that point on is one of action, from Westley defeating all three of Buttercup’s kidnappers at their own games to the final storm of Humperdinck’s castle.  It’s enough to keep the Grandson appeased, even though he does interject comments here or there about other things.  There are plenty of elements that are completely at home among the many other fantasy-adventure stories released at the time, such as Inigo Montoya’s revenge subplot, and the idea of the torture machine.

However, it’s hard to argue that The Princess Bride is a straight adventure film.  As exciting as the fencing-matches are, it’s very easy to point out very early on that the movie isn’t 100% taking itself seriously.

Because it’s not.

The light-hearted dialogue during Inigo’s sword fight with Westley, the matter-of-fact way that Humperdinck explains his plan to murder Buttercup, every interaction between Inigo, Fezzik, and Vizinni, and the entire sequence with Miracle Max all contain a very dry, sharp wit that remains present throughout the entire film.  The characters casually exchange quips during life-threatening situations, respond in very understated ways, or have generally comedic conversations and reactions surrounding the action set pieces.

As I mentioned at the end of the ‘story’ article, The Princess Bride is not really interested in taking itself seriously.

This is not to say that it’s not sincere.

The characters believe what they say.  There is an incredible earnestness to their dialogue and actions that prevents this from falling into the ‘spoof’ category, but by the same token, it doesn’t quite erase the fact that this film, while playing its own tropes straight, is having a little fun with them nonetheless.  

This brings us to another pretty obvious genre: comedy.

The Princess Bride has no shortage of hilarious lines and moments, from the banter over Inigo and Westley’s sword fight to the Grandson’s constant interruptions and complaints about the events in the story.  The moments of comedy are in fact some of the most quoted scenes in the film, and entire scenes seem to be built in setpieces to allow for some genuinely funny dialogue, such as the Miracle Max sequence.  For sure, there is a lot of The Princess Bride that’s very tongue in cheek, geared to be intentionally humorous.

But there’s more to being a comedy than being funny.

Comedy is a really broad umbrella, which can encompass a ton of different subgenres: comedy of ideas, black comedy, farce, parody, situational, etc.  Comedy is also one of the genres that can be easily mixed with others to create action-comedies, horror-comedies, or even fantasy-comedies, which, it would seem The Princess Bride is one of.

Here’s the thing: as funny as The Princess Bride is, it doesn’t really fit the comedy bill.

Typically, a really good way to tell a film’s genre is to analyze the characters, especially the main protagonist, and the story beats.  These elements best illustrate exactly what kind of story you have, and in the case of The Princess Bride, neither the story, nor the characters are those found in comedies.

Comedies typically rely on either absurd, exaggerated, or humorous characters, or an absurd, exaggerated, humorous plot.  Ghostbusters is a comedy because the main characters respond to a horrific plot in humorous ways.  It Happened One Night is a comedy because of the dynamic interaction between the extreme protagonists in an unusual situation.

The Princess Bride certainly has characters that wouldn’t be out of place in a comedy (Vizzini, Miracle Max and Valerie, the Albino, the Impressive Clergyman, etc.) but the main characters, Westley, Buttercup, Inigo, etc, are played straight, as is the story.

The plot of The Princess Bride, on paper, is exactly the sort of story you’d expect in Highlander, Willow, or any of the other countless fantasy films that sprouted up, all over the 1980s.  To quote Roger Ebert’s review of the film:

“‘The Princess Bride’ looks and feels like ‘Legend’ or any of those other quasi-heroic epic fantasies – and then it goes for the laughs.”

The Princess Bride is a comedy, for sure: or at least, it’s a very funny movie, but the witty wordplay, as memorable as it is, is not the main takeaway from the film, or at least, it’s not meant to be.  There aren’t really any audience expectations that are set up here, because in comedies, most audience expectations are actually punchlines, and The Princess Bride isn’t really concerned with those.  There’s no set of audience guesses about the next joke, because the story isn’t about the jokes.  The film is interested in making you laugh, but not to the point where they’re making that the main focus.

Instead, it’d seem like the main takeaway, or one of them at least, should be romance.

From the title onward, The Princess Bride seems like it’s gearing up to be a romance film along the lines of Ladyhawke.  ‘True Love’ is one of the phrases the Grandfather uses immediately to clue the Grandson and the audience in on what they’re about to see: the story proper opens up with a tender realization of this aforementioned true love, and the main characters are determined to do whatever it takes to reunite.  Sounds like a romance, right?

Again, not to burst anyone’s bubble who puts The Princess Bride in their top romance films of all time lists, but it doesn’t really fit that bill either.  At least, not in the way we’re used to.

Romance films are built around, pretty obviously, the romance.  Casablanca’s story revolves around the relationship between it’s leads and the barriers in the way.  Singin’ in the Rain has plenty of scenes about the leads’ interactions and falling in love, and Say Anything’s plot hinges on the main characters’ dealing with challenges in their relationship.

In other words, romance films are focused on relationships and the people in them.  Even Ladyhawke has plenty of time devoted to expanding on the main characters’ feelings towards each other and their history.

But The Princess Bride doesn’t.

Sure, it’s completely vital to the story that Westley and Buttercup are in True Love with each other, there’s no questioning that.  Without that, there’s no story, period.  But with that said, there’s not a whole lot of focus on the relationship itself.

We’re told that Buttercup and Westley are in love by both the story itself and the characters, and since they fall in love so early in the story, before the opening narration is even finished, we don’t really see the actual ‘falling in love’ portion that most romance films tend to focus on.  There’s no realization or choice, or decisions to make about the relationship, rather, the True Love of the story works less like an actual romance and more like a bonafide force of nature, drawing the two leads together and making their happiness possible.  The true goal of the story isn’t to fall in love, it’s to be together.

So, is there a set of audience expectations to be met here?

In romances, a happy ending is typically expected (unless it’s Casablanca, take a look at the study on that one from a few months ago, if you’re interested!), an ending that portrays the main leads together, realizing their love for one another.  If that’s the only criteria, then The Princess Bride would be golden, but, as I mentioned before, in most romance films, there’s other factors that contribute to the genre.

Like I said before, most romances tend to have a focus on the relationship’s development, and the character’s interactions with one another, again, something that The Princess Bride doesn’t really have.  Westley and Buttercup spend most of the film separated, and while Cary Elwes and Robin Wright have undeniable chemistry that makes the relationship believable, there is very little actual interaction to back it up.

The film isn’t terribly focused on the relationship, all that matters is that it does.

So, with that in mind, is The Princess Bride a romance film?

Well…yes and no.

The Princess Bride fulfills the audience expectations of a two genres the most: Fantasy/Adventure.  Thanks to the fantastical, magical elements of the story, and the focus on true love and bravery, it very neatly falls into the category of a fairy tale: but a self-aware one.

While a Mel Brooks-eque parody might use this opportunity to make jokes about the fantasy world and relatively generic plot, The Princess Bride lets it’s story play out, without feeling the need to prove to its audience that it’s ‘smarter’ than that.

This isn’t to say there aren’t moments of self awareness: the film does gently poke fun at it’s own story through the narrative device of the Grandfather and the Grandson’s banter over the story: the Grandson’s complaints about the romance elements, arguments about the ending, etc.  The film uses the framing device to stay one step ahead of the audience, showing them that yes, they know exactly what they’re doing.  But the humorous acknowledgement of the genre and type of story that they are telling does not change the actual story that is being told.

That seems to leave us with a pretty definitive answer, but before we wrap, let’s ask two final questions:

Question 1: What type of story is this?

Question 2: What type of hero/protagonist is this?

We’ve already answered, through the use of ‘audience expectations’ and fulfillment, what kind of story The Princess Bride is.  But we do need to answer the other question: what type of hero is this?

The Princess Bride shares it’s ‘hero’ spotlight between arguably three people: Westley, Buttercup, and Inigo.

Westley and Buttercup have more or less the same goals, and the same perspective in mind, at least, once they’re reunited.  Much like Navarre and Isabeau from Ladyhawke, their romance is established: their end goal is just to actually live their lives together.  On the other hand, Inigo’s goal is revenge, a motivation not out of place among other fantasy-adventure stories of the time.

To pursue both goals, all the characters endure various perils, (The Fire Swamp, torture, swordfights) as found in any fantasy-adventure story, to achieve their individual ends.  It is these goals, and the route taken to achieve them, that determines what kind of story this is.  In the case of Westley, the dashing hero at the center of it all: a fantasy-adventure-romance, a grand, epic tale from the perspective of a man who will do anything to be reunited with his true love.  For Buttercup, it is a fantasy-romance, the story of a woman trapped into awaiting rescue from a lover she thought to have died.  For Inigo: it is a fantasy-adventure, a swashbuckling story about vengeance and justice for a father ruthlessly taken from a son.  

And it’s all tied together by a kindly grandfather, knowingly reading the story to his impatient, reluctant grandson.

The result?

The Princess Bride is a perfectly charming fantasy adventure film, about a romance that happens to be funny.  It was all of this unique genre-blending that made this film such a nightmare to market, but in the end, created a cult classic that has continued to be fresh, entertaining, and inspiring over thirty years since its original opening, and will continue to be enjoyed by generations more, as long as we keep reading fairy-tales.

Don’t forget to leave a comment, like, or some other form of love if you enjoyed this analysis, and please, follow for more articles like this!  Thanks so much for reading, and I hope to see you in the next article.

[imadeletingmysocials]

My Final Say On The Final Fantasy 7 Compilation:

DILLY DALLY SHILLY SHALLY!

Now let me say something: I don’t fully hate the remake, my feelings are at best mixed towards it, because of course it plays on my heart strings at moments, I grew up with Final Fantasy 7, I recognize and fall for the fanservicey recreations of PS1 moments, I just hate it’s tone and different atmosphere because I recognize this is obviously fanservicey everywhere you go and rarely comes as close to the original feel, more on that later of course, here’s what’s core: Final Fantasy 7 Remake at best feels like a compromise between the new and the old fans, with some old fans not really feeling 100% about it from what I gathered around many people I know. Everything I hear is “The gameplay is fun and engaging! but some shit is definitely silly and could have been cut” stuff like: the amount of filler, characters that honestly don’t add that much to the world building, and the saturday morning cartoon prolongation of certain moments which were straight to the point in the original, this is a remake where you get to see fast-paced deep cut moments turned into a slow agonizing over-redundant slow insertion of a knife, it’s like using a butter knife to cut a well done stake.

Again, a compromise with the fandom, THAT fandom, the fandom that scared everyone into playing Final Fantasy 7 which was at best a REALLY Good regular JRPG, and it really was like this weirld proto-cringe culture built around a cult, Final Fantasy 7 was this grimdark game about ecology, direct action, the over reach of corporate control on resources, spirituality and all that, and it was ALL REDUCED TO YAOI SHIPPING, I will never forgive you guys for reducing Final Fantasy 7 to that shit and it is one of the main reasons why the Compilation became this anime shit, I’m not even someone who unironically says “this is too anime” but that’s my attitude with a lot of the compilation, there is stuff in this compilation series that makes it all feel like a fucking parody of Dragon Ball Z when outside of that, the original was pretty grounded.

The original was so grounded that it’s still debated if Final Fantasy 7 is cyberpunk AT ALL if not dieselpunk, with the compilation and remake adding more cyberpunk and high-sci-fi aspects like China-like social credit, or VR, and they’re all ham-fistedly added additions to the series, it’s just them running with the idea of “I guess we’re considered cyberpunk now, better play the part and add these cliche tropes”, Final Fantasy 7′s world clearly has a class division when it comes to who has technology and who doesn’t, some technology in the FF7 world is old and some is new, but in the original it’s really just a select places that hold power towards technology: Like the facilities of Midgar or the Golden Saucer.

Adding a lot of these sci-fi aspects and prolonging on the midgar section of course adds plot holes: In the original, the Midgar section flies so fast it’s just one event after the other WHICH IS GOOD, not letting air to breathe in your structure keeps the plot tight, keeps the momentum and pacing good, allowing that air to breathe too much results in what I like to call: Nomura’s Awkward Silence. You’ve probably seen it in Kingdom Hearts quite a lot but Nomura is a shitty director who manages to make scenes so badly and prolonged that by the end any logical person would go: “...But? Wouldn’t that not work?”.

FF7′s Midgar was fast-paced cuz this is a group of eco-terrorists which are on a constant verge of being caught so they’re constantly on the move, plot hole nitpicky shit starts to happen when you don’t have a fast-pacing to keep most hooked and here are examples which aren’t helped with the new plot device additions:

Why doesn’t Tifa confront Cloud’s past since they now have a lot of time to catch up

Why would a terrorist group just... Hire someone and let them stay in a normal ass 

Why is Avalanche just chilling around the sectors when they all live in a mass surveillance state, no really adding that mass surveillance plot device really makes everything fall apart, in the original SHINRA just IMMEDIATELY after the first bombing bombs sector 7 with absolutely no-restraint, them seeing AVALANCHE bomb one of their reactors makes them go: “Oh we can kill them all in one swell swoop and put the blame on them no problem we just giving them a false means of comfort” and the new bombing of Sector 7 REALLY does showcase my annoyance with all of the minor changes that were fine and better in the original: This is also best exemplified by how reno in the original just presses the button and is done with it but the remake prolongs this scene so much, that RENO has to fight you first??? Even if he is literally facing the fucking button??? cuz ANIME FIGHT! and then they make RUDE press the button when before they developed him as “somewhat nice guy” which only clashes even worse with the fact that he was the one who presses a button to SUPPOSEDLY kill an entire sector, well I say supposedly cuz now, there is no weight in that, Barrett doesn’t shoot the fallen sector’s walls in anger and (that’s what motivates him to go to Shinra once and for all) because actual stakes? what are that? No, everyone evacuated this time and the new NPCs are all fine :)

Throughout the whole game, they play up characters who are minor in the original but are FULL BIG FUCKIN IDOLS in the remake now, and as a result, the “bad guys who become good guys as the game on” HAVE TO HAVE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IMMEDIATELY. Fuck pacing! We need to show that the HEROES HAVE A CONSCIOUSNESS NOW! and STILL MAKE THEM DO EVIL THINGS. Like what is the point in developing your villains and showing they have a conciseness if they are still going to do bad things? In FF7 the only start developing a consciousness AFTER the bad things, like ff7 remake makes Dude somewhat decent and showcases Reeves as a nice person but they still did evil things regardless so it’s uselesss. Now I won’t say FF7 doesn’t do this and shows Reeves has his gripes but it doesn’t go

Again, BARRET HAS A FUCKING GUN FOR AN ARM, HE SHOULDN’T BE OUT IN THE PUBLIC... AT ALL, HE SIGNED HIS DEATH WARRANT WHEN HE GAVE HIMSELF THAT ARM AND DEDICATED HIMSELF TO THE CAUSE, THIS IS WHY HE ALWAYS LIVES ON THE MOVE AND ALWAYS HIDING. 

Again, why did they introduce the idea of everything being a mass surveillance state if Cloud, Tifa and Barret can literally storm Shinra’s headquarters and Shinra workers are just... chilling in the lobby, it’s all empty, but in the original you had a somewhat sense of danger and the only way to progress was through going through specific corridors in a certain order or tricking Shinra workers.

Every single time the dementors appear.

Examples of the anime-transformation of the remake and making everything a lot harder to not take seriously are: 

Scarlet being a comical dominatrix who like a cartoon character smacks the character when in the original she was truly like a serious fucking villain.

Aeris (or Aerith, not sure anymore) pretty much becoming a Disney Princess

Every single villain going to saturday morning cartoon levels of overreduncancy. 

And of course I hate this shit, I have a connection with the original you know, if it wasn’t called a remake or if it didn’t touch the original maybe I wouldn’t have thought otherwise but because of the fact that it goes out to make these ridiculous changes feels like some sort of insult in a way. Minor inconveniences start to become major inconveniences and Final Fantasy 7′s remake is CHOCK FULL of it. 

It’s the weirdest comparison I know, but the one I feel still works is: You know how Disney movies would a TV adaption? Like how Disney’s Hercules had a Hercules TV show and it went on to develop background characters you barely knew, while basically overly expanding on that interlude of the movie? Well that’s what Final Fantasy VII remake feels like, some even said that this remake feels like as if they made a MCU movie series based on the original, honestly I don’t know which one is worse, sounds pretty bad which ever way you put it.

A controversial opinion but one that never the less is true is that: Midgar was not supposed to be ANYTHING BUT A SET UP, it was just there for the sake of world building, now I guess it’s just me and a couple of friends but we aren’t part of the gang of “I didn’t play Final Fantasy 7 pass Midgar” which apparently is a thing, it goes as far as cultural video game stereotype, I’m one of the few people who played passed Midgar, and i’m one of the few people who prefer the game past that section as everything when the world begins to open starts to build on that set up Midgar introduced, like Midgar isn’t everything FF7 has to offer, it’s just the setup, Midgar is the BIG BAD, but you need to recgonize how Midgar is pretty much a plot device at best and what is more important is the villages of the planet and how each are affected by Midgar’s reach and corruption, like Red Canyon, small villages with rocket projects or Wutai (which the Compilation LOVES to set up as the other super-power against Midgar, rather than letting Midgar be the only superpower like in the original I guess).

Midgar is structured like this fast-paced action film, beat by beat, in fact following the same structural high points of an action movie. Midgar was always designed to be a 2 hour experience, like a fun roller coaster ride or romp, it wasn’t meant to be the WHOLE GAME or that prolonged. 

And a lot of those things will be gone and sacrificed in the remake: For example, you cannot recreate well-placed shots and angles in the remake cuz it doesn’t have pre-background sets like the original. In doing so, you sacrifice shit and make choices LIKE THIS: 

Rather than the slow-panning of the shot that results in this iconic scene:

I want to be clear here: I do not hate Final Fantasy 7 remake for it’s lack of subtlety, whenever Final Fantasy 7′s remake has the chance to be political and preachy about it, that is actually where it expands VERY well on the original (unlike the whole fucking Compilation shit or the annoying quirky NPCs they introduce which honestly don’t add much and kinda remove and detach from what’s kinda important at the matter, again the pacing fucking sucks), the original works as it is with short burst of dialog without dwelling on actual political theory (It can get annoying of course for example: Barrett in the remake every 10 seconds talks about how he wants to save the planet, while Barrett in the original doesn’t need to be that repetitive, in fact I think you can count every time in the remake he says “SAVE THE PLANET”  almost as much “DARKNESS” is said in Kingdom hearts... NOMURA!!!), you know keeping it simple for all of the teenagers playing it in final fantasy 7, vague enough to be accessible.

I could go on about all of those weird changes in the remake which could have been left as it is, like almost every single side-mission, I don’t know of a single side-mission in FF7 I left thinking “Wow that was really worthwhile, thought provoking and added quite a lot to the world building!” cuz guess what, it didn’t. The children don’t add much like we get it children are not immune to SOLDIER propaganda (Cloud is literally the personification of this did we really need this), the angel of the slums shows stealing from the rich is good (like the entire game is about killing corporate people and despite Barrett feeling a lil bit remorse in his methods he never feels remorse in killing anyone related to SHINRA), like oh thanks for showcasing to me that thieves can be good people like the child I am. These are all engineered to make people who didn’t get the point in ff7, messages which feel are for children, which I guess a lot of gamers are, the dumbification of video games as a whole angers me but that’s a completely different subject, you ever notice how characters in the past didn’t talk about every single action they should be performing but every game after 2010 has to be annoying about that?

I still have mixed feelings on FF7R. Little things that are lil fanservice can be nice, but then the final fantasy 7 remake just throws the cake onto the ground as soon as it seems tasty, the best example of this would be the cutscene showing Shinra’s plan in Shinra’s headquarters, it is an EXCELLENT COMPLIMENT to the original, like the original has about the same amazing world building set up of how 2000 years ago FF7′s world was just a regular Final Fantasy world! Final Fantasy 7 is special because of that this particular world building, and compliments to that realism and tone ARE GREAT! Those are moments in which the tone of the game SHINE! It makes you go “Aw that was a nice recreation and it complimented the game fine” but then Sephiroth. You know... That one villain who isn’t supposed to be appearing every single second in the original but since the pacing is dogshit I guess he’s basically become Cloud’s little one winged angel on his shoulder that has to appear IN EVERY cutscene, I really do hate this mother fucker. I hate that Sephiroth bitch, I hate that he became more of an mascot for FF7 to the point it overshadows his role as just a pawn of a more deeper evil (JENOVA) sephiroth was nothing but the representation of soldier exploitation going wrong, and how that symbolically is connected to the end of the world and an evil very alien. Sephiroth was never supposed to be this actual character, in fact he stopped being a character when... you know.

Somehow Palmer can see Sephiroth but that makes 0 sense and is the dumbest fucking addition... Aren’t only people with Mako supposed to see him? And the idea is that Sephiroth can only gain physical form through the bodies of SOLDIERs cuz he’s more of a virus now. But you know... Sephy-kun is a star now! SO HE NEEDS TO SHOW UP EVERY FUCKING SECOND and PRACTICALLY SPOIL THE WHOLE ORIGINAL GAME, what clearer message of “we hope you played the original or else” than all of those forced flashbacks, and how funny that the original demon of FF7remake was straight forward and didn’t include sephiroth flashback but as soon as the game released they put them in! HM, I WONDER. I WONDER. That really does feel like a “haha you actually bought the game! sucker.” 

But by that point I’ve basically become that fan that goes “you should read the book, I don’t like it that in the movie they did all of these little changes”, but truth be told Final Fantasy 7 remake turned me into that kinda person. Again: It doesn’t help that this is literally not a medium conversion, but a full on re-writting from the people who worked, and I don’t care what Nomura considers a “remake”, this makes the original story flow a lot worse.

“You fuckers asked for it! So here it is” says Square Enix when people were angry that FF7 was being re-released over and over again, teased with tech demos since the PS3 era! Truth be told, I was always on the fence for a Final Fantasy 7 remake, I was fine with the original, I cannot speak for everyone else but on my side it was just people going “I REALLY FUCKING HOPE THIS ISN’T COMPILATION BULLSHIT“ AND hahah AHAHAHAH well

Final Fantasy 7 remake’s structure is... AMAZINGLY WELL PUT WHEN YOU START TO SEE THAT THE LONGER IT GOES, THE MORE IT STARTS TO STRAY AWAY FROM GOD’S LIGHT, In fact I think that’s brilliant, it’s like a well made bad prank, you get to see people in real time react to this shit and it’s almost a universal experience so props to the designers for managing to do that, at first it starts building your immunity with like dementors and you’re like “why the fuck did they add this? oh well i guess I’ll just keep going” but then by the end of the game throws shit at the fan and some people are devoted to those changes saying “ah fuck it” or you know: This is dumb. I’d say that 35% of Final Fantasy 7′s remake’s content compliments the original and 65% is modern Square Enix’s shenanigans.  

The rest of this thread is pretty funny also:

This might sound controversial but: When your shit is edited in the editing room, maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason it was edited out. Final Fantasty 7 Remake has this attitude of “WE GOTTA ADD EVERY SINGLE DELETED CONTENT WE COULDN’T HAVE PUT IN THE ORIGINAL, WE HAVE THAT POWER NOW TO GET SILLAY!” which is often the downfall of a lot of video games and their artistic integrity, it’s a constant thing and I’m sure I won’t be visiting it for the last time: video game directors are often these egoistical people who are left like children with this amount of power to just do dumb shit and because video games are an exceptional quirky medium, people just let bad writing and anime shit fly, I mean this is what I have always meant by video games as a medium being like b-movies and kitsch at best, you rarely see this medium be high art.

I think the best example of this is comparing to the movie medium, most importantly: George Lucas, George Lucas was a guy who because of a lot of editors their story became something that even overshadowed themselves, have you seen Star Wars without an editor? It sucks. This showcase should have killed the auteur but in the industry sometimes this is not the case, what results of that is a huge inflation of one’s ego and they start getting more and more power to direct stuff in whatever way they see fit!

The Video game medium has allowed the auteur theory to test it’s limits, I don’t know if it’s fair to blame everything on the black sheep Nomura (I mean Motomu Toriyama is as much to blame here, if not even worse, this is the guy who directed X-2, I’m sure if anything he might have done more harm) it is kinda hard to detach the directors from the product however, especially in this case when a lot of people’s gripes come from unnecessary filler, tone, and terrible pacing. That’s kind of all the directors job you know? 

I detest the idea that a good tone is only set by the standards of western cinema or the soviet montage standards. You can accomplish a good and serious tone by a lot of means, it doesn’t need to be 100% serious, but I don’t want it to become as ridiculous or redundant as a low-budget shonen anime. It doesn’t help FF7 Remake case because it doesn’t go out to compliment FF7 that well. It doesn’t matter what Nomura thinks a “remake’ entitles, because regardless, the changes in this will forever be compared to the original, FF7 remake does not exist in a vacuum, it isn’t a stand-alone original game, it just feels like a weird adaptation that doesn’t fair well to the original plot structure.

Which is where I’ll start to bring this long commentary to a halt! If Nomura himself admits that FF7′s Remake is Final Fantasy VII Compilation Part 5 well all I have to say, and what has and will always be my stance of this so called “compilation” is:

The compilation of final fantasy 7 has always been over redundant filler. It’s all either so bad it’s good or so fanservicey it’s obnoxious. Every single compilation is a mixed bowl of “This is actually cool” and “this is just dumb and unnecessary”. The novels, the side-entries on flip phones, they all feel as if they come from a smug aura of “Clearly you didn’t get the plot from one game alone so we clearly have to expand on it so we can get EXTRA MONEY!”

Oh and the whole one winged angel shit (now a plot device thanks to crisis core) and the NOMURA idea of “you gotta play all of the entries to understand this shit” fucking sucks man! 

Nomura games are so close to being so good, but there’s always that fucking CRINGE that appears, and this kind of shit makes me actually sincerely use the word “cringe”, cloud might as well pull a fucking keyblade in which LIGHTNING from Final Fantasy 13 is there saying how she is THE BEST CHARACTER EVER MADE whatever! Consistency and tone is dead, we get it. 

Every single sequel to Final Fantasy 7 is just cashing in on the fame and it’s unnecessary, you can enjoy FF7 on it’s own. It’s feeling a LOT, A LOT like Disney’s approach to Star Wars, you didn’t have to do all of this for Star War’s simple premise. I feel like that ungrateful child who got a shitty present: You really shouldn’t have.

I mean don't get me wrong, the original has that pre-famous Square Enix comic relief, and the only time you ever got that kind of subtle comic relief again was in Final Fantasy 9, the last call-back to the series being traditional. I think it's impossible to recreate Final Fantasy 7 in the style and tone it was created in 1997, because that WAS LITERALLY before Square Enix became famous and that fame went up to their head.

That's like expecting a “Final Fantasy 6″-type game to not be made by an indie developer or a small dev team today, it's not gonna happen. An AAA developer just does not have the soul to do that today. Many people were like “What if they just did the same thing as the game but with jus priddy graphics” well given the crusty JPEG skyboxes in the remake they couldn’t have even concentrated on that alone it seems, also my answer to that is: of course they’re gonna do that. Square Enix has just enough of an ego to not let shit be simple.

I mean it’s a given right, a lot of people were angry about Chrono Cross because it wasn’t quite Chrono Trigger either (at this point Square Enix was already transitioning into Final Fantasy 8-stuff and going all over the place in terms of quality, with multiple teams developing multiple games, trying to catch the high of Final Fantasy 7, but not really seeing what FF7 did to hook so many people, namely on how FF7 is the most serious and accessible entry in the whole series that isn’t Final Fantasy 6 (although Final Fantasy 6 wasn’t as cinematic which the 90s video games loved the opportunity with the gift OF 3D!).

Also:

Bull fucking shit, I am not convinced you aren’t gonna plaster Sephy-kun flashbacks at every single moment like you have, like if you really were to do a beat per beat Final Fantasy 7 remake after that that’s just so funny. 

"OH WE JUST FUCKING SPOILED THE WHOLE GAME IN THE FIRST ACT"

"BUT THE REST OF IT WILL BE NORMAL'

Like... How? Will you lower the budget for the next parts of the remake. That would legit be kinda funny,  "we just wanted to make midgar really long and weird like that, thats all, the rest will be 100% a remake! The alternative universe ghosts won’t come this time.” I just cannot believe that until I see it.

Uh what should I end this long rant with uhhhh...

[taffystake]

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse  -  Adapting the Spider-People

Figured I would try and write something different today. After spending the last few days doing research into each of the Spider-People we were presented in Into The Spider-Verse and also making sure to rewatch the movie, I feel like I can confidently outline what exactly was taken from the comics for each character and how this helped to make each Spider-Person their own unique entity.

With this, it’s easiest to start with the three who are the  farthest from their comic counterparts. These would be Spider-Man Noir, Sp//dr, and Spider-Ham. And it makes sense, since these three are the least characterized by the movie due to how short of a time they’re in the film relative to our other three Spider-People. All three of these Spider-People take the name of a comic character and use it as a representation of a specific medium or genre. 

Anyway, let’s start with the one character who is a representative of her medium in both her comics and the movie, Sp//dr. In the movie, Peni Parker is a short schoolgirl with a high degree of technical aptitude and who pilots a very cute, spherical-style mecha and whose motions and design are all taken from lighter anime like Sailor Moon. Meanwhile, Peni Parker from the comics is a moody, sullen teenager with a lone wolf streak, no tech skills to speak of, and who pilots a mecha whose design and method of control requiring specific genes both are direct references to Neon Genesis Evangelion’s titular Evangelion mechs.

Next, lets talk about somehow whose comic run and time in the movie couldn’t be more opposed, Spider-Man Noir. The only thing that the two mediums share are the Noir aesthetic for storytelling and visual, and the general time within which the character exists. Let’s explain. Spider-Man Noir, as the movie presents him, is a hard-boiled noir detective with a very Humphrey Bogart style to him whose powers were obtained from a radioactive spider. His costume is very much a typical detective’s coat and fedora, and his entire world and himself are in black and white. Meanwhile, Spider-Man Noir of the comics is a very self-righteous socialist activist who becomes a vigilante after his reporter mentor’s death who obtained his powers via a mystical idol. His costume is designed off of a World War 1 Flight Suit that his uncle Ben owned before he died and while the world is rendered with heavy shadows to match the theme of a Noir fiction, it is not rendered in black and white.

Finally, there’s Spider-Ham. And he shares nothing beyond a name and a proclivity for animal puns with his comic. Movie Spider-Ham is basically a Looney Tunes cartoon, from the wacky movements and high energy he brings to the use of his mallet and other Looney Tunes staples as weapons. Meanwhile, Spider-Ham in the comics is a parody of Spider-Man, used to poke fun at notable Spidey storylines or to make little jabs at character names using animal puns but the character’s personality is still very close to Peter Parker.

Now then, let’s move onto the main characters of the film: Peter, Gwen, and Miles. And here, these characters definitely use more of their characterization from the comics for this movie. So lets look at how things line up for these characters.

Lets start things off with the first dead and the first displaced Spider-Person: Peter Parker. Now, with the original Peter Parker that exists in Miles’ universe, we see a character who very much matches up to the character you expect from the comics: very quippy, typically light hearted, and always willing to help out. I mean, he took time out of a fight to say he would train Miles once everything was over. Then, with Peter B, we get a view of a Spider-Man who actually has to deal with what has happened to him in the comics while also having time catch up to him, resulting in a Peter Parker with a dead aunt, a divorce from his wife, and whose life is generally an unending downward spiral of death and misery. But he is still the same Peter underneath all of that, and while he hasn’t grown up much emotionally from his high school days, we get to see that develop as he deals with the events of the movies.

Its hard to say much about how close he is to comics Spidey. Mostly because the two Peters show the two most extreme paths that Peter can take. Namely, he can be up front with his family about his secret, manage to create a myriad of unique tech, and be overall positive, or he can be cagey about his Spider life, let his life’s usual trend of misery and bad events get to him, but still be a mostly heroic guy at the end of it. So, you could claim either side as being the ‘more comics-true’ Spider-Man, because both have been represented in Spider-Man stories for decades. 

Next up, we have the most punk rock Spider-Person in film, and a decently punk Spider-Person in comics, Spider-Gwen (Or Spider-Woman. Or Ghost Spider. All depends on what you ask). And with her, we have the closest to their comic counterpart in the movie. While the two Peters show the two sides of Peter Parker as Spider-Man rather than a more balanced Spider-Man as might be seen in the comics, Spider-Gwen is essentially taken straight from her first few stories. She is a very intense lone wolf who feels like she has to do the superhero thing because of her friend’s death in trying and failing to emulate her. Honestly, the only major change is that Gwen declares she stops doing the friend thing in the movie, whereas the comics have her band with her universe’s Mary Jane to serve as her friend group that she has a very tense relationship at times. Which, honestly, is an easy cut, since saying she doesn’t do friends gets to essentially the same feeling. 

It also helps to keep Spider-Gwen a unique character here by dropping some of the later story elements from the Spider-Gwen comic. By taking her character from the point before that comic got focused on its own alternate universe events, the removal of Gwen’s powers, and the introduction of the symbiote, it keeps her character at a point where I consider her the most interesting.

And now, finally, we have Miles Morales. The successor to the Spider Mantle in the Ultimate Universe. And with the movie, they made a very distinct call on Miles’ character that takes him drastically away from the character he was in the comic storyline that Into The Spider-Verse borrows many story elements from. In the comics, Miles is a wallflower from the moment he is introduced. He is a meek 13 year old who gets what seems like his first friend when he gets to Visions Academy. And he honestly shares a lot of personality traits with Peter Parker in these original stories, having a lot of Peter’s lacking social skills from his high school days. The two major divergences are the lack of science skills to develop his own web fluid and his story initially starting from his belief he needed to help Spider-Man and didn’t.

Miles in Enter The Spider-Verse takes the few more distinct elements that helped mildly generate a different style to Miles and pumps them up to eleven while also helping establish a more distinct personality from the Peter Parker mold that his comics counterpart initially kept close to. He is very personable, more jokey in his normal persona, and whose moments of lacking social skill come from his new environment being something that he isn’t as used to rather than that just being his personality. The other major difference that stands out is the increased focus on graffiti and rap culture that Miles shows in the movie. And those interests aren’t just some cliche thing with Miles, they are used to help show his level of artistry and add personality through his enjoyment of a song like ‘Sunflower’. 

Now then, why all these changes if these characters worked in their own comics? Honestly, for the three minor Spider-People, it helps give a distinct and striking image that won’t take a large amount of time to fully establish. Because if Spider-Man Noir and Spider-Ham had kept close to their comic counterparts, half of their screen time would’ve required them doing their best to show their own distinct shade of Peter Parker-ness rather than the striking different color that the two characters have as representatives of their two genres. Finally, while Peni Parker’s character from the comics could have worked if it weren’t for two things: popularity of what she represents and the presence of Spider-Gwen.

From her comic roots, Peni is very clearly meant to evoke Neon Genesis Evangelion through her link to the mech and the mech’s design. And while that anime may be a very notable one for those who have an interest in the medium, its popularity does not typically extend far beyond that. So altering her character to evoke anime that have been brought to the West and have been in the cultural consciousness for a long time like Sailor Moon makes it so that her unique animation and actions stand out more distinctly for general viewers. The other reason is Spider-Gwen, whose character shares a lot of traits with Peni Parker in the comics. And since Spider-Gwen would be a major character, it makes it easier to alter Peni to her current tiny chipper status than it does to spend half a movie trying to keep the two intense teen girls with spider powers distinct in peoples’ minds.

The same extends to why Miles seems so different when compared to his time in the Ultimate comics universe. By giving him this unique personality and interests that stand out for the character, it enables Miles to simply be himself rather than be another character who has to spend a part of his screen time attempting to create a distinct shade of Peter Parker-esque personality. Honestly, with this method, it creates a group of characters who are colorful and unique, while giving our main cast characterizations that could be coined as their ideal comics version. And with how highly rated and popular this movie is, i hope to see these characterizations adapted back to the comics, especially for Miles and Gwen.

[technologicalsanbustech-blog]

i phone x

                                                           iPhone X review: face the future    

 After months of hype, endless speculation, and a wave of last-minute rumors about production delays, the iPhone X is finally here. Apple says it’s a complete reimagining of what the iPhone should be, 10 years after the original revolutionized the world. That means some fundamental aspects of the iPhone are totally different here — most notably, the home button and fingerprint sensor are gone, replaced by a new system of navigation gestures and Apple’s new Face ID unlocking system. These are major changes.

New iPhones and major changes usually command a ton of hype, and Apple’s pushing the hype level around the iPhone X even higher than usual, especially given the new thousand-dollar starting price point. For the last few years, we've said some variation of "it's a new iPhone" when we’ve reviewed these devices. But Apple wants this to be the beginning of the next 10 years. It wants the iPhone 10 to be more than just the new iPhone. It wants it to be the beginning of a new generation of iPhones. That's a lot to live up to.

This review is going to be a little different, at least initially: Apple gave most reviewers less than 24 hours with the iPhone X before allowing us to talk about it. So consider this a working draft. These are my opening thoughts after a long, intense day of testing the phone, but I’ll be updating everything in a few days after we’re able to test performance and battery life, do an in-depth camera comparison, and generally live with the iPhone X in a more realistic way. Most importantly: please ask questions in the comments! I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can in the final, updated review.

But for now — here it goes.

Design

At a glance, the iPhone X looks so good one of our video editors kept saying it looked fake. It’s polished and tight and clean. My new favorite Apple thing is that the company managed to move all the regulatory text to software, leaving just the word “iPhone” on the back. The screen is bright and colorful and appears to be laminated tighter than previous iPhones, so it looks like the pixels are right on top. Honestly, it does kind of look like a live 3D render instead of an actual working phone.

The iPhone X basically looks like a living 3D render

But it is a real phone, and it’s clear it was just as challenging to actually build as all the rumors suggested. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not flawless. There’s a tiny sharp ridge between the glass back and the chrome frame that I feel every time I pick up the phone. That chrome frame seems destined to get scratched and dinged, as every chrome Apple product tends to do. The camera bump on the back is huge; a larger housing than the iPhone 8 Plus fitted onto a much smaller body and designed to draw attention to itself, especially on my white review unit. There are definitely going to be people who think it’s ugly, but it’s growing on me.

There’s no headphone jack, which continues to suck on every phone that omits it, but that’s the price you pay for a bezel-less screen with a notch at the top. Around the sides, you’ll find the volume buttons, the mute switch, and the sleep / wake button. The removal of the home button means there are a few new button combinations to remember: pressing the top volume button and the sleep / wake button together takes a screenshot; holding the sleep button opens Siri; and you turn the phone off by holding either of the volume buttons and the sleep button for several seconds and then sliding to power down.

And, of course, there’s the notch in the display — what Apple calls the “sensor housing.” It’s ugly, but it tends to fade away after a while in portrait mode. It’s definitely intrusive in landscape, though. It makes landscape in general pretty messy. Less ignorable are the bezels around the sides and bottom of the screen, which are actually quite large. Getting rid of almost everything tends to draw attention to what remains, and what remains here is basically a thick black border all the way around the screen, with that notch set into the top.

I personally think the iPhone 4 is the most beautiful phone of all time, and I’d say the iPhone X is in third place in the iPhone rankings after that phone and the original model. It’s a huge step up from the surfboard design we’ve been living with since the iPhone 6, but it definitely lacks the character of Apple’s finest work. And… it has that notch.

Display

The iPhone X is Apple’s first phone to use an OLED display, after years of Apple LCDs setting the standard for the industry. OLED displays allow for thinner phones, but getting them to be accurate is a challenge: Samsung phones tend to be oversaturated to the point of neon, Google’s Pixel 2 XL has a raft of issues with viewing angles and muted colors, and the new LG V30 has problems with uneven backlighting.

Apple’s using a Samsung-manufactured OLED panel with a PenTile pixel layout on the iPhone X, but it’s insistent that it was custom-engineered and designed in-house. Whatever the case, the results are excellent: the iPhone X OLED is bright, sharp, vibrant without verging into parody, and generally a constant pleasure to look at. Apple’s True Tone system automatically adjusts color temperature to ambient light, photos are displayed in a wider color gamut, and there’s even Dolby Vision HDR support, so iTunes movies mastered in HDR play with higher brightness and dynamic range.

It’s just a terrific display

I did notice some slight color shifting off-axis, but never so much that it bothered me; I generally had to go looking for it. And compared to the iPhone 8 Plus LCD, it seems like a slightly cooler display over all, but only when I held the two side by side. Overall, it’s just a terrific display.

Unfortunately, the top of the display is marred by that notch, and until a lot of developers do a lot of work to design around it, it’s going to be hard to get the most out of this screen. I mean that literally: a lot of apps don’t use most of the screen right now.

Apps that haven’t been updated for the iPhone X run in what you might call “software bezel” mode: huge black borders at the top and bottom that basically mimic the iPhone 8. And a lot of apps aren’t updated yet: Google Maps and Calendar, Slack, the Delta app, Spotify, and more all run with software bezels. Games like CSR Racing and Sonic the Hedgehog looked particularly silly. It’s fine, but it’s ugly, especially since the home bar at the bottom of the screen glows white in this mode.

Some apps almost look right, but then you realize they’re actually just broken

Apps that haven’t been specifically updated for the iPhone X, but use Apple’s iOS autolayout system will fill the screen, but wacky things happen: Dark Sky blocks out half the status bar with a hardcoded black bar of its own, Uber puts your account icon over the battery indicator, and the settings in the Halide camera app get obscured by the notch and partially tucked into the display’s bunny ears. It almost looks right, but then you realize it’s actually just broken.

Apps that have been updated for the iPhone X all have different ways of dealing with the notch that sometimes lead to strange results, especially in apps that play video. Instagram Stories don’t fill the screen; they have large gray borders on the top and bottom. YouTube only has two full-screen zoom options, so playing the Last Jedi trailer resulted in either a small video window surrounded by letter- and pillar-boxing or a full-screen view with the notch obscuring the left side of the video. Netflix is slightly better, but you’re still stuck choosing between giant black borders around your video or the notch.

Landscape mode on the iPhone X is generally pretty messy: the notch goes from being a somewhat forgettable element in the top status bar to a giant interruption on the side of the screen, and I haven’t seen any apps really solve for it yet. And the home bar at the bottom of the screen often sits over the top of content, forever reminding you that you can swipe to go home and exit the chaos of landscape mode forever.

I’m sure all of this will get solved over time, but recent history suggests it might take longer than Apple or anyone would like; I still encounter apps that aren’t updated for the larger iPhone 6 screen sizes. 3D Touch has been around for years, but I can’t think of any app that makes particularly good use of it. Apple’s rolled out a lot of screen design changes over the years, and they take a while to settle in. We’ll just have to see how it goes with the iPhone X.

Cameras

I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the cameras on the iPhone X, but the short answer is that they look almost exactly like the cameras on the iPhone 8. Both the telephoto and wide angle lenses have optical image stabilization (compared to just the wide angle on the 8 Plus), and the TrueDepth system on the front means the front camera can take portrait mode selfies. It’s nice.

iPhone X rear camera (left) / Pixel 2 XL rear camera (right)

Of course, the main thing the front camera can do is take Animoji, which are Apple’s animated emoji characters. It’s basically built-in machinima, and probably the single best feature on the iPhone X. Most importantly, they just work, and they work incredibly well, tracking your eyes and expressions and capturing your voice in perfect sync with the animation. Apple’s rolled out a lot of weird additions to iMessage over the years, but Animoji feel much stickier than sending a note with lasers or adding stickers or whatever other gimmicks have been layered on. And while iMessage remains a golden palace of platform lock-in, Animoji are notably cross-platform: they work in iMessage, can be sent as videos over MMS, or exported as MOV files. Nice.

Face ID: it works, mostly

The single most important feature of the iPhone X is Face ID, the system that unlocks the phone by recognizing your face. Even that’s an understatement: the entire design and user experience of the iPhone X is built around Face ID. Face ID is what let Apple ditch the home button and Touch ID fingerprint sensor. The Face ID sensor system is housed in the notch. The Apple Pay user flow has been reworked around Face ID. Apple’s Animoji animated emoji work using the Face ID sensors.

If Face ID doesn’t work, the entire promise of the iPhone X falls apart.

The good news is that Face ID mostly works great. The bad news is that sometimes it doesn’t, and you will definitely have to adjust the way you think about using your phone to get it to a place where it mostly works great.

Face ID is cutting-edge tech, but the fundamental concept is pretty simple: it’s basically a tiny Xbox Kinect. An infrared projector flashes out thousands of tiny dots that cover your face, and the front camera clicks on, captures that image, and turns it into a depth map. That map — not an actual image of your face — is stored locally on the iPhone X’s Secure Enclave, which is the same place Apple stored Touch ID fingerprint data.

Setting up Face ID is ridiculously simple — much simpler than setting up Touch ID on previous iPhones. The phone displays a circular border around your face, and you simply move until a series of lines around that circle turn green. (Apple suggests you move your nose around in a circle, which is adorable.) Do that twice, and you’re done: Face ID will theoretically get better and better at recognizing you over time, and track slow changes like growing a beard so you don’t have to re-enroll. Drastic changes, like shaving that beard off, might require you to enter your passcode, however.

Face ID should also work through most sunglasses that pass infrared light, although some don’t. And you can definitely make it fail if you put on disguises, but I’d rather have it fail than let someone else through.

In my early tests, Face ID worked well indoors: sitting at my desk, standing in our video studio, and waiting in line to get coffee. You have to look at it head-on, though: if it’s sitting on your desk you have to pick up the phone and look at it, which is a little annoying if you’re used to just putting your finger on the Touch ID sensor to check a notification.

You also can’t be too casual about it: I had a lot of problems pulling the iPhone X out of my pocket and having it fail to unlock until Apple clarified that Face ID works best at a distance of 25 to 50 centimeters away from your face, or about 10 to 20 inches. That’s closer than I usually hold my phone when I pull it out of my pocket to check something, which means I had to actively think about holding the iPhone X closer to my face than every other phone I’ve ever used. “You’re holding it wrong” is a joke until it isn’t, and you can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong.

You can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong

That’s a small problem, though, and I think it’ll be easy to get used to. The other problem is actually much more interesting: almost all of the early questions about Face ID centered around how it would work in the dark, but it turns out that was exactly backwards. Face ID works great in the dark, because the IR projector is basically a flashlight, and flashlights are easy to see in the dark. But go outside in bright sunlight, which contains a lot of infrared light, or under crappy florescent lights, which interfere with IR, and Face ID starts to get a little inconsistent.

I took a walk outside our NYC office in bright sunlight, and Face ID definitely had issues recognizing my face consistently while I was moving until I went into shade or brought the phone much closer to my face than usual. I also went to the deli across the street, which has a wide variety of lights inside, including a bunch of overhead florescent strips, and Face ID also got significantly more inconsistent.

I’ve asked Apple about this, and I’ll update this review with their answers along with more detailed test results, but for now I’d say Face ID definitely works well enough to replace Touch ID, but not so well that you won’t run into the occasional need to try again.

Recent Apple products have tended to demand people adapt to them instead of being adapted to people, and it was hard not to think about that as I stood in the sunlight, waving a thousand-dollar phone ever closer to my face.

Software

There’s a lot of new hardware in the iPhone X, but it’s still running iOS 11 — albeit with some tweaks to navigation to accommodate the lack of a home button. You swipe up from the bottom to go home, swipe down from the right to bring up (down?) Control Center, and swipe down from the left to open the Notifications pane. That pane also has buttons for the flashlight and camera; in a twist, they require 3D Touch to work, so they feel like real buttons. It’s neat, but also breaks the 3D Touch paradigm. It’s the only place the entire system where 3D Touch acts like a left click instead of a right click. It’s emblematic of how generally fuzzy iOS has become with basic interface concepts, I think.

Switching apps is fun and simple: you can either swipe up and hold to bring up all your apps in a card-like deck, or just quickly swipe left and right on the home bar to bounce through them one at a time.

And… those are basically the changes to iOS 11 on the iPhone X, apart from the various notch-related kerfuffles. If you’ve been using iOS for a while and iOS 11 for the past month, nothing here will surprise you. Apple might have completely rethought how you unlock the iPhone X, but it’s still not giving up on that grid of app icons or making notifications more powerful or even allowing the weather app icon to display a live temperature. Siri is still Siri. If you’re buying an iPhone X expecting a radical change to your iPhone experience, well, you probably won’t get it. Unless you really hate unlocking your phone.

The iPhone X is clearly the best iPhone ever made. It’s thin, it’s powerful, it has ambitious ideas about what cameras on phones can be used for, and it pushes the design language of phones into a strange new place. It is a huge step forward in terms of phone hardware, and it has the notch to show for it. If you’re one of the many people who preordered this thing, I think you’ll be happy, although you’ll be going on the journey of figuring out when and how Face ID works best with everyone else.

It’s a new iPhone

But if you didn’t preorder, I suspect you might not feel that left out for a while. The iPhone X might be a huge step forward in terms of hardware, but it runs iOS 11 just the same as other recent iPhones, and you won’t really be missing out on anything except Animoji. Face ID seems like it’s off to a good start, but it’s definitely inconsistent in certain lighting conditions. And until your favorite apps are updated, you won’t be able to make use of that entire beautiful display.

All that adds up to the thing you already know: the iPhone X is a very expensive iPhone. For a lot of people, it’ll be worth it. For a lot of people, it’ll seem ridiculous. But fundamentally, it’s a new iPhone, and that means you probably already know if you want to spend a thousand dollars on one.

Because this review isn’t final, we’re not scoring the iPhone X yet. Leave your questions and comments below, and we’ll try to address as many of them in our final review as we can. We’ll add the score at that time as.

                                 ............sanket         

[knightofbalance-13]

http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/160557741934/the-writers-comfort-zone

I don’t hold miles, Kerry, and Grey in a high regard when it comes to their writing abilities. At least, when it comes down to writing a serialized show like RW/BY.

Considering the number of times where you attacked the writers, specifically Miles, and the amount of misinterpretation and  blatant bashing and manipulation of facts, everyone who cares knows this and knows you’re biased as fuck against them so your words hold as much weight as a feather here.

Look, the Chorus Trilogy of RvB was good. Sure, it had some questionable bits (Like pretty much putting Felix in nearly every episode), but it was still enjoyable. We got to see Doc again, We got to see F.I.L.L.S/Sheila again, and Tucker’s sword-key was used for a plot point.

It was good.

Notice how Dudebalde’s one question part example isn’t the question of how Doc came back, how O’Maliey manifested, how Miles wouldn’t stop throwing in characters but concerns screentime concerning a character voiced by Miles. AKA that is a rehash of “Jaune too much screentime” And this equally bullshit considering Felix is one of the main villains and is always in the company of the other villain thus for the villains to have a presence in the story, Felix HAS to be in the episode.

Camp Camp was enjoyable. Yeah, the Hitler jokes got old in that one episode, and there were some other questionable things in there (like how some characters are portrayed, and forced to give sympathy to despite having not earned it), but it was enjoyable. I could laugh at that Romeo and Juliet parody sequel, and Nikki’s fourth-wall awareness.

It was good.

Again, the example doesn’t work, this time because you’re questionable example doesn’t have a specific instance so how would one improve on it. You were able to give a specific albeit totally incorrect example above and now you give a possible correct but too vague example here. The two definitive wrongs and you used them both in succession. Jesus.

Chibi had a lot of episodes that were either hit-or-miss. Regardless, season one had a lot of episodes (more than the first two volumes combined if you don’t count WoR). Still,the Jaune asking Weiss thing got old in Volume 2, and there was no way that it could become likable just by putting it in a comedic setting. But there were some enjoyable bits. Like those comic adaptations one, and Yang’s training montage.

It was good.

Anything concerning Jaune you have no right to argue in due to your massive bias against the guy and the guy who voices him as well as your inability to remove personal bias from your analysis. And again. your description of RWBY Chibi being hit or miss doesn’t work because that’s comedy as a whole (Being hit or miss by nature) thus useless as criticism. And now you’ve screwed up again, both times and in quick succession. Ugh...

But RWB/Y is the first time the writers have to make something with original characters, that isn’t episodic orcomedic.

They aren’t in their comfort zone.

You’re wrong on two levels. One, RWBY is classified as a Dramedy like Red Vs. Blue and thus has comedy in it so your comedic point is invalid.

Two: Red Vs. Blue stopped being episodic back in Season 6 with each episode either setting up or progressing the current plotline in a serial manner. And by your own admission, they did a good job on Chorus. So your episodic point is invalid.

They have nothing to follow, and this is why I dislike Volume 4. It just felt like nothing was planned. Four Relics? - Thrown in there to make it look cool (despite the fact that this idea was a cliché for so long, that it’s probably written in stone), and Jaune’s unnecessary upgrade (Seriously. He just sacrificed defense so that way he could do two side swings, two diagonal swings, and one overhead swing; as compared to the single sword that could parry, stab, and do many more things that a great sword could not.).

Well, this is hilarious as fuck.

1. Acting like nothing was planned despite the fact that this season WAS the planning season thus it is BUILDING the plans. Not to mention the pacing in this Volume was better than the previous Volumes which had a more steady stream of plot progression and character progression than before. Meaning this Volume was probably planned out, especially since Monty planned teh outline of RWBY with the writers as well so that’s crap.

2. Surprise, Jaune is getting bashed here! Not only is the upgrade only shown in the final episode of the Volume and said episode didn’t have Jaune as the focus no matter how much whining is made thus we haven’t seen the full extent, not only does it make sense to give Jaune the tactician the ability to switch the style he has between versatility and defensive to power and offense thus giving his team the edge in whatever they need at the time but you are arguing the practicality of a greatsword in a world of sniper scythes, shotgun gauntlets, pistol whips, rifle javelins, purse Gatling guns and so on!

3. And this is the funniest thing: You have not said a word about the Maidens despite the fact that it is confirmed that the MAIDENS were thrown in because it was cool and the relics are CONFIRMED to be planned originally, thus you completely missed the mark.

Nothing feels as if it was planned, and that’s why this Volume felt like Dawn of Justice. People wanted it. People were hyped for it. But it just didn’t live up to the hype. Yang’s complex character arc? - her nightmares and panic attacks are never mentioned after she gets her prosthetic. - Look, I get that animation is hard,and that it takes effort. - Y’know what isn’t hard? - Having a character just talk.

No, it’s just like Volume 1 and 2: Build up to a climax. Does this mean people should judge RWBY entirely on Volume 1 alone despite the fact that RWBY is a continuous story? Because this is equally foolish.

And has it not occurred to you that maybe this show made by a small company using new software, without their main animator and a limited amount of time while producing another show (chibi) and mentoring a new writer on a much older, more well respected show (Red Vs.Blue) And thus they don’t have all the time in the fucking world to do this. Apparently not, or it did and your realized you couldn’t bitch about it so you ignored it.

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the writers are running out of ideas as to how to progress the story. Hell! They had to make Ruby state why she’s doing this journey when the audience already knew why she was doing this journey. We don’t need to be filled in on what we already know. It simply felt as if it were filler designed to give Ruby extra lines to remind us that she’s the main character.

Or, here me out, Ruby was telling other people why she was going to Mistral and thus informing the people or it was a recap style in which Ruby was restating it to ease the audience into it. I don’t know because you conveniently don’t bring up a specific instance or quote!

Also, running out of ideas huh? Are you sure that’s it and it’s not, I dunno, Volume 4 being build up thus the purpose of the Volume was to set things up for Volume 5 and not to advance the plot that far, considering the focus was on character interaction, character development and world building.

I want the show  to get better, I really do. But the writers have no intent on listening to any criticism, and their lack of communication with the VAs shows that even they have some issues with how the writing is going. If they had explained to them as to what was going on, they could have offered some advice as to how to write their character.

- But they don’t. In fact, Arryn had to issue an actual apology for voicing her concerns as to how the character she was chosen to voice was acting. I don’t know if it was her own choice to do so, or if it was the writers that made her do it, but regardless, not even the voice actors know what’s going on.

Well, they have no intent on listening to criticism from people whole, manipulate facts and attack them and they have every right to do so. Even if the criticism is actual criticism and not attempts to control the show for their own agenda, the writers can still choose to rebuff criticism if they feel it isn’t needed. And considering Miles seems to be a frequent practitioner of self deprecation, if he feels it’s going alright, I’d give him a fair chance.

And you want proof you manipulate the facts? you said Arryn was apologizing for what she said on Always Open when the Twitter post is about her clarifying what she meant, which is stated to be an apology to try and make the writers look bad through the image of forcing Arryn to apologize which, as a concept, is stupid considering Arryn doesn’t work on Rooster Teeth, has other voice acting jobs and they can’t fire her because she’s a main character VA meaning if she was being mistreated as you say, she can speak up and teh writers will have to do as she says.

They get no input. They don’t get to voice their opinions about how the script is being written. It simply feels as if they’re just there to look pretty and voice the characters.

While the writers get to have all the glory of writing such an epic storyline that could do with some improvement.

Mind proving that? Mind showing us a video or tweet or anything that says they have to say the lines exactly as they are written? Because you apparently ahve never heard of ad libbing where a Voice actor can just make up or change a line on the spot, which is very much a possibility. Proof? One of the most iconic and defining lines of the horror movie villain Freddy Krueger (”Welcome To Primetime bitch!” is an ad lib so it’s entirely possible. Especially since you would need to animate everything AFTER the lines are recorded to properly sync the libs. Hence why english dubs in anime are either shit or new mouth flaps are added.

Like I said before: I’d like for them to plan out at least three volumes in advance to at least, show that they have a plan and that they aren’t shoehorning new things to make the show sound ‘cool.’

It would alleviate some concerns.

Like a certain animator who constantly threw in shit because it was cool, either spoiling plot points or character moments or bring a character in too early or completely fucking over the established universe and rules? Yeah, nice try there, unless I see a post you made criticizing Monty, I’m assuming bias against the current writers.

Also, would it kill them to hire more writers instead of spending that money on one-shot actors? - Seriously, am I the only one who has a problem with this? - All that money, WASTED! Just so they could say that they had TeamFourStar and Funimation actors in their show? - It just doesn’t feel worth it.

Like at all.

No, you are not. I actually agree that was a waste of money and could have be used better. However, this still doesn’t excuse the fact that you have manipulated the facts, lied several times and used manipulative language to try and get the readers to hate the writers. Even this point, the only one I agree with, is pretty tainted considering that Monty wasted money getting Jen Talyor to voice Salem, the main villain and not some random randos. 

This was just a giant bitch fest against the writers and I advise you to shut up or learn to make criticisms that aren’t the result of misinformation and bias.

[daniellethamasa]

Hey all, Dani here.

So you might be asking, “hey Dani, wasn’t Gen Con at the beginning of the month? Why do a wrap up now?” Well, I had one of my blog buddies say she would love to read about my time at Gen Con, especially as she wants to start trying to diversify her conventions, but she also wanted more information first.

Plus, when you get a little removed from an event (or a book/movie/etc), it is easier to distance yourself from any super happy or super upset feelings you might have had at the time, and you can write a more factual and balanced review of everything. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Gen Con is a gaming convention, and it features hundreds of game developers and companies, as well as business that sell game accessories. Now when I say gaming convention, the easy assumption is that I am talking about video games, but I don’t think I have seen any sort of video or console type game there. No, this is a gaming convention for tabletop gaming, which means board games, card games, dice games, and tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons.

This year was the 51st Gen Con and it was even bigger than the previous year. The photos don’t even come close to showing how large or crowded this convention is, because there are just so many wonderful geeks in the world, and events like this really help you to see how not alone in the world you are. It is currently held in Indianapolis, Indiana, and it is an amazing experience. The convention itself takes up the entire Indiana Convention Center, plus they have also spread out into several of the nearby hotels, and Lucas Oil Stadium (which is the arena where the local NFL team, the Indianapolis Colts, are based). What I love about having part of Gen Con in the football stadium is that they house the gaming library there, and if you have purchased a pass to use the library, then you can go there 24 hours a day through the four day convention and borrow a game to play. Yes, a bunch of lovely geeks swarm through this holy house of jock-dom for four whole days.

We actually went to Indianapolis a day early, on August 1st, so we wouldn’t have to wake up at 5am the next day to make the three hour drive. It ended up being the best decision we could have made. We were able to pick up all of our tickets that day, and also just relax a bit. Okay, so we also went to an Irish pub (O’Reilly’s Irish Pub) for my birthday, which then turned into the Irish pub and then a Scottish pub (MacNiven’s). So I had a Shepard’s Pie, and then we had bread pudding for dessert. At the Scottish pub we had Scotch Eggs. Then we went to a comic book store (Downtown Comics) too, so naturally I picked up a few things.

And that’s just all the fun from the day before the convention. Now let’s get to the actual first day of Gen Con. It was a mad house, and we went straight for the Critical Role booth, because there was some cool merchandise that we were hoping to get, and we waited for a good half-hour or so to actually make it to the booth. But I ended up with dice and shirts and even a map for the current campaign, so I am super pleased.

I’m not going to lie guys…we spent most of our money on day one. There are just so many cool games and accessories and costume pieces. It is a geek wonderland. The first day of the convention was also a cool day because we got to meet Joe Mangianello. Now most people will probably recognize Joe from being in the show True Blood, or possibly from the Magic Mike movies. What you may not know is that he is a massive geek, loves D&D, and actually has a really cool gaming dungeon in his home. We waited for almost an hour to meet him, but it was totally worth the wait…and I got him to sign my Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Player’s Handbook, so that is also pretty awesome. Oh, and the game pictured below is A Song of Ice and Fire, and it is sort of a battlefield strategy game based on Game of Thrones. We watched it being playtested and it seemed pretty interesting. Of course neither my fiance nor our other buddy who went with us has seen the show (or read the books) so it was just a cool looking game to them.

Day two of the convention we spent a lot of time just running around and checking out some of the games. At most of the game developer booths, you can sit down and play the game before you buy it. Okay well if it is a shorter game you can play through the whole game, but longer games they pretty much prefer you to just play a few rounds to get an idea of how the game works. There are a lot of other people around who would also like to try playing the games. The highlight for day two of the convention for us was actually that evening after the convention center closed. We met up with the owners of our hometown game store and they actually bought us dinner at this bar (The Yard House). My fiance and I run a couple D&D campaigns for them and they wanted to thank us for everything we’ve done for the store. Free food is definitely the way to do that. But after that, we had tickets to go see Critical Role live. It was my second time going, but my fiance’s first, and I was so glad I got to share the experience with him. Oh, and there was a surprise guest star for the episode of Critical Role…Khary Payton, an actor some people may recognize from the Walking Dead.

We had an extremely lazy day for day three of the convention. Critical Role Live ended around 1 am, and then we had to walk back to the parking garage where our car was parked (only to discover that the parking garage had closed for the night, so we had to run around to figure out who to contact to get to our car). By the time we made it back to the hotel we were staying at, it was around 2:30 am. Because we were also low on spending money, we just decided to hang out at the hotel, enjoy the pool, watch some TV, and play some of the games we had purchased. The only convention event we had on our schedule for the day was going to Dungeon Master, which is a live interactive show. It ended up being a very entertaining show, but the real reason I got tickets for this particular show was that it was being opened with a concert by The Library Bards, and they are a geek parody band who makes covers of Top 40 hits by making them into geeky songs–for example “Zombie” by the Cranberries becomes a song about Deadpool and Harley Quinn cosplayers called “Black and Red”, and Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” becomes a LOTR/Hobbit song called “Gandalf.”

Finally, we made it to day four, the last day of the convention. We played a couple more games, and made a couple more purchases with the little spending money we had left. I will be completely honest everyone. I hate the last day of a convention. The last day means that I have to go home and return to my regular day-to-day schedule. It means leaving a place where I am surrounded by thousands of people who like a lot of the same stuff I do, and going back to a place where only a small percentage of people actually understand me. Leaving a convention after having such a great time is always difficult. But on our way back to our car before the three hour drive back home, I decided that we needed to get something to eat, and after walking past this pizza shop over a dozen times, we finally stopped into Giordano’s to get some Chicago Style Deep Dish pizzas.

I guess I should talk about this last picture. There are a lot of booths at Gen Con that give out these little ribbons that you can attach to your convention badge. For many attendees at the convention it becomes a scavenger hunt to collect as many as possible. I have seen people with enough ribbons hanging from their badge to make a long scarf or sash. It is impressive. We only went to Gen Con for one day in 2017, so I think we got one or two ribbons. Obviously this year I did much better, but I’m still hoping for a more impressive collection next year.

Next year I also plan to attend a few panels and/or workshops, because we didn’t really do that this year. There is a whole section of the convention that is a Writer’s Showcase, and they have some great industry professionals there to hold classes on worldbuilding or magic or editing, etc. The guests of honor this year were the duo behind S.A. Corey, author of The Expanse series. Previous years have had Patrick Rothfuss in attendance. Margaret Weis was there this year as well. So next year I definitely want to spend a little more time in the bookish side of Gen Con–though I did walk through that entire area on the show floor, and I will show off everything I purchased in my August Wrap-Up post.

Wow, okay, this post got pretty long. I hope you all enjoyed this look into our time at Gen Con. If you want me to talk more specifically on the games that we playtested and/or purchased, let me know. Because we found quite a few really fun games, and I like talking about more than just books. I’m your average geeky girl, with many geek hobbies.

Anyway, that’s all for today, and I will be back soon with more bookish content.

Gen Con Wrap Up Hey all, Dani here. So you might be asking, "hey Dani, wasn't Gen Con at the beginning of the month?

[fangirlingabout]

Entertaining to the MAX

As someone with an... approximate knowledge of the DC universe and more specifically the BatFamily (most of which being from littlenightwing), and as someone who just enjoys really funny comedies and great animation, I pretty much was doomed to love this movie. 

But hell, even without all that “””bias””” what makes this movie so especially bitchin’ is how it succeeds at pretty much everything it sets out to do. Make a good follow-up to the Lego Movie? Check. Strike a great balance as a kids movie? Check Two. 

Bring the BatFamily to the big screen again (FINALLY) in a way that can make general audiences fall in love with them? All checks. All of them, those checks are yours now. 

Be a good spoof movie---a genre so dead it needed to be revived with little tiny lego defibrillators? A THUNDERSTORM OF CHECKS RAINING DOWN FROM THE HEAVANS.

Doing a Comic Book Movie

Adapting anything to film is magic trick and a half, but adapting comic books---90 years of them, for that matter---is a whole magic show. It’s no small feat to capture the heart of the characters and world and what makes it so beloved.

Add that on top of the magic you need to perform to make a good spoof movie, which takes that deep understanding and builds off it (ayyyy) in exaggerated, hilarious ways. Plus, like I said, the entire spoof genre has been left in the hands of the people who made the Scary Movie franchise, which has fallen so far from... well, I don’t want to say grace, but you get my point. There’s only been bad parody movies coming out in the mainstream for years now.

But if I’d trust anyone to manage both kinds miracles, I guess I’d have to give it to Phil Lord and Chris Miller! Even if you don’t know their names, you’ve probably laughed at their work (well, with their work): Clone High, Cloudy a Chance of Meatballs, 21 Jump Street, (A few episodes of) How I Met Your Mother, (the pilot of) Brooklyn 99, and, obviously, the Lego Movie itself.

Basically, these are two writer/directors best bros who I’ve loved ever since I was young with Clone High because that’s exactly my sense of humour---and they’re still killing it to this day.

And thank god, they manage to nail this movie on so many levels. 

What really rocks is how thoroughly they understand Batman’s corner of the DC universe---not just for the amazing, nerd-level-100 references from all sorts of Batman media, but because in order for the comedy to really work, they have to make a super-fan love for all things Batman infectious.

And it works. So, so well!

And the parody aspects of this movie work for the same reason. It’s like the old saying goes “it’s funny because it’s true.” Sure, it’s exaggerated for a punchline, but if it didn’t come from a genuine place to begin with that exaggeration wouldn’t be able to carry the movie.

The BatFam and Rogues Gallery 

AND THIS IS THE BEST PART.

See, the BatFamily hasn’t come to the big screen aside from the mostly-straight-to-DVD-but-if-they’re-in-theaters-they’re-limited-release animated movies, which leaves legions of starving BatFam fans waiting for their favourite characters to even get a slight mention or blink-and-you’ll-miss-it background reference.

The Arkham games (and of course the comics themselves) are enough to keep them alive, but the fact that 1997′s Batman and Robin killed all possible BatFamily movies for basically 20 years means it’s been rough.

So, now we have the first real inclusion on the BatFamily! It’s a parody of them, but at least since it’s a good parody that does demonstrate some understanding of the characters and how meaningful their relationships are, it’s enough! At least, for now. My hope is that having a popular, awesome movie with some BatFamily members in it will open the door to even more BatFam to come!

Because look, I have to take this character by character for a second to really show why this could hopefully be the building blocks (AYYYYY) for something even greater down the line (or, great in a different way, I should say).

Let’s start with Dick Grayson as Robin. This Dick Grayson is mostly a parody of the original TV boy wonder, Burt Ward. Which works, even though it’s not an accurate portrayal of more modern incarnations of his character. Michel Cera somehow managed to really make this character endearing when he could’ve been pretty annoying, as high energy as he is.

The best comparison I can make for animation fans is, well, Wander, from Wander Over Yonder, but without the country accent. There’s an adorable beating heart always on display that makes him lovable---he’s even got some quieter moments thrown in there---and the way the lines are delivered never crosses that line into annoying-sidekick territory. 

So, this Dick is a good Dick. He still serves the role even modern Dick Grayson did as Robin, to be the hopeful light in the dark knight’s world. 

And see, if they took inspiration from lego Dick Grayson at all when adapting modern Dick, I hope they keep that idea intact---because no matter what incarnation of Dick we’re going for, his humour and kind lightheartedness even in the face of a dark world and immeasurable pain---that’s what makes him a wonderful son character for Batman. 

Well, that and how much they love each other, obviously, but thankfully, that’s another thing this movie doesn’t skimp out on. Since its a comedy, the writers get away with Dick using the words “dad” or “padre” (dad) or even “batfamily” a glorious amount of times. So even if there’s since going to be a wait before we get to see a serious portrayal of their father-son relationship, it’s honestly enough to know some people in Hollywood actually know.

Barbara/Batgirl gets a great role as well. Not necessarily all points are stellar (the recent Killing Joke movie aside, I’ve been told Barbara and Batman don’t have a relationship that’s sexual in nature most of the time, so it’s just kinda... creepy; thank god they didn’t make them end up together in this movie), but it’s small in comparison to the awesomeness of lego Barbara.

Granted, I know much more about Dick Grayson than I do about Barbara (you know who to thank for that), but at the very least, I appreciate that her role in this movie is competent, well-accomplished straight-man and not damsel in distress, which even I know is so not Barbara (The Killing Joke is hard story to adapt without, y’know, using her as a plot device in kinda awful ways, so I’m just glad to see her not be used that way).

That’s the kind of thing I hope they’ll carry over when it’s time for a more serious Barbara story. In this movie, she feels a bit too much like Wild-Style from the first Lego Movie, and I would’ve loved to see even more of Barbara’s character and what makes her unique (again, this is something I need to learn), but yeah, definitely a step in the right direction.

Alfred’s had some great adaptions over the years in terms of movies, but I will say I don’t think it’s been acknowledged before what a father figure (and in turn grandpa figure) he is in the BatFamily. Good to see him get his due.

And I mean overall, there’s this whole other side to Batman, BatDad, that has been sorely missing from cinema. We’ve seen the brooding loner Batman done well, but there’s so many stories to tell when you bring in his surrogate family, and you can see that in this movie!

Oh, and the Joker?

Absolutely adorable. Which... isn’t something I’d normally advocate saying, but they really have fun with his and Batman’s relationship in such a great way. Protect this clown child please (again specifically this version).

And that’s not even counting the dozens of other rogues that get a hilarious cameo in this movie. It’s all so fantastic, I need to rewatch it just to get all the jokes involved with them because I was laughing so hard I missed some.

So it works as a (spoofed) BatFamily story, a comedy and a parody movie, and even just a really well done animated kids movie in general.

This is definitely what I would call a hyper-active movie---the jokes come hard and fast and don’t really stop---but it can also take it’s time for the characters (and hell, even for the comedy; long, quieter jokes that just keep going are always a risk, but like the sloth scene in Zootopia, the times they make that gamble it pays off).

Even just as an animated movie, look at this shit:

The photo-realistic Lego-based animation from the first movie combined with a neon colour scheme that ends up being so fitting for Lego Gotham... is bootiful. It’s some beautiful animation (and the comedic timing just makes it better)!

And the score? The score is always hilariously timed---every song choice is there for a specific purpose. That’s probably the best way to look at this movie: not a moment goes to waste.

Really, it’s a family of excellent elements all working together to make one hell of a whole.

[theworstbob]

the thing journal, 7.2.2017 - 7.8.2017

capsule review-like entries about the things i saw or heard last week. in this post: lord steppington, the golden hour, the last man on earth, souled out, splasher, le jour se leve, creed, a 14 ans, 4:44, singles, heart beats

1) Lord Steppington, by The Step Brothers: I wrote a brief paean to Rhymesayers last week, and I do stand by it, I'm just not thinking about this album specifically when thinking about the label. It's a decent album, it's very Midwest in spirit what with the soul samples and whatnot, but it's also thoroughly whelming Midwest rap. And that's not a bad thing, not every album is destined to be the best album ever! And "this album is OK" isn't that great a criticism, like oh no, how dare something not instill a fire within me, and we didn't make it five sentences into this album before I wrote about writing. Tomorrow will come.

2) The Golden Hour, by Kimbra: So real talk, I sort of thought this album was gonna be the biggest waste of time of all the 2014 joints I added to the library. I only knew her from the Gotye song, she was described as "dream pop" which doesn't sound like anything which could capitavate me, I'm not 110% into the Gotye song if I'm being perfectly honest, it seemed like a bad time from the second I hit "add." But wouldn't you know it, while there was a lot of indie bullshit (man "90s music" is such a predictable bummer), there were actually two (2) disco-y tracks that went hard as hell and made me pay attention. I sort of expected this entire album to move at 3 MPH for 50 minutes, and while I recognize it's not fair to weigh an album against one's expectations (0/2! nailing it this week!), the dance tracks themselves were actually great, and knowing Kimbra was capable of doing more than whisper plaintively made me pay attention to the rest of the album, and there was some really cool stuff in there. Not my cup of tea, but not something I'd refuse if it was what a host had on offer.

3) The Last Man on Earth s3, cr. Will Forte: Definitely the best season so far. The episode where Tandy takes Kenneth Choi to his home in Seattle while Carol tries to get Gail to adopt her is so good, it feels like something the series had to do at some point, acknowledge that these characters had lives before the virus that they are thinking about all the time, and the Kirsten Wiig episode was gold, like, half that episode is just Kristen Wiig yelling at a dog, and that's the better half of the episode. I also really love the version of Tandy who expresses his self-centeredness by trying to be the nicest most helpful boy alive. The show is just so nice and so great and I'm so excited to see where they take s4 in however many months.

4) Souled Out, by Jhene Aiko: One day I'm going to admit to myself that I don't like this kind of music as much as I want to. Like, greatness transcends, I can hear Blood Orange or Solange or SZA and know what I'm listening to is a miracle, but stuff like this or Syd or Smino, like, I want to be where these albums are, but I just can't get to that place. And part of this is just the way I treat music, I know, I'm trying to get the full experience with just one listen on a bus ride home and that's not doing it right, but with albums like this, which are so very subtle and so very understated, what I would get out of the full experience isn't worth the effort it would take to sink into it. I'm sure it's very good, but I'm just never going to be this into mid-tier alt-R&B, and I'm okay with admitting that. Like, I'm about to rave about a colorful platformer video game where you play as a spiky-haired child who bounces off special paint, I'm not quiet R&B introspective jam person.

5) Splasher, dev. Romain Claude: I'm actually writing this like six levels deep into this game because I am absolutely in love. If there's one genre of game I love, it's indie platformer (I like VVVVVV and Runbow, I'm not an afficionado or anything), and this hits a thousand of my buttons. Like, I plunked money on an actual controller for this game, because I tried it for like ten minutes with my keyboard and was like "Nope, nope, this will never work" and set it down (did I write about my first ten minutes in here? Not sure I did. Ah, well!) and now I have a controller and my gosh the movement. This is a game that wants you to move through it quickly, but it never feels like you're out of control at any point, the little orange dude whose name probably doesn't matter is always responding to what you're telling him to do. Like, the air controls! He floats just enough that moving him around is still a skill to be mastered, but not so much so to make it tedious, they struck a really fine balance there. So the game hasn't felt unfair as of yet, all the (many) deaths I have suffered (many, many deaths) have been 100% my fault and have not felt frustrating in any way. And every level with the golden bouncy paint has been absolutely delightful. I'm not sure what later levels have in store for me, I'm sure I'm gonna hit a difficulty curve, but my gosh, what a wonderful little treat!

6) Le Jour Se Leve, dir. Marcel Carne: yes hello hi welcome to post i am reviewing a colorful video game about a bouncing parkour child an 80-year-old french film So I mean I don't have anything to say about this film, but it's just so nuts to consider that films used to look like this and feel like this. Like, the idea of this film wouldn't have been out of place in the dark anti-hero TV drama boom of the 21st century, but cinema had only progressed so far in the '30s, so it's a dark anti-hero drama being told with the cinematic language that had been developed to that point. You can see the first steps being taken to Breaking Bad, but it's several decades away from actually getting there. But the film is also telling its own story, it's not just a marker on the chart of evolutionary progression, it's absolutely worth watching on its own merit, but the entire time, I was just thinking, oh hey I've seen that executed more completely in recent years, that's cool to see the idea before it was fully developed.

7) Creed, dir. Ryan Coogler: The most impressive thing this film did was be a film that worked for someone that had never seen a Rocky movie. It does assume you know some moments from the Rocky series, but only the iconic ones you've seen parodied in other pop culture events. You hear the Rocky theme, you see the steps Rocky walked up, the main character is the son of the most famous adversary, it doesn't traffic in advanced Rocky esoterica, it is just a film that carries the Rocky branding. And I love the way it dealt with legacy. Every single character was trying to do something before life took the opportunity away, and it felt honest while still feeling sort of like meta-commentary, like Creed knew it was going to be judged against Rocky and wanted to prove it was Creed before people called it Rocky in the same way Adonis needed to prove he was Adonis before people started calling him Apollo's son. That's me reading way too much into the movie, though. It was dope. Hey guys did you know that movies a bunch of other people also have seen,,, are good? Sometimes things in the mainstream are OK, too! Anyway here's another French film.

8) A 14 ans, dir. Helene Zimmer: I don't think I've ever seen a film that allowed teenage girls to be the assholes they are in this film. Like, movies like Mean Girls or Easy A or what-have-you are about how teens can hurt each other, but the teens' assholishness is heightened for comedic effect, and the teens all learn lessons in the end. This presents an unvarnished look at how teen girls can absolutely fuck up everyone's lives, and I thought that was fairly admirable. Yet while it was doing that thing, it never lost sight of the fact that its characters were still developing as people, that they weren't necessarily aware they were doing monstrous things they were just kids who don't know any better who were fucking up in ways they might never be able to understand, so the film wasn't this dark look at The Dangers of Teening, it was a sympathetic portrayal of young women figuring out who they wanna be. It’s not a coming-of-age story, it’s a being-of-age story. This is an accurate descriptor of the portrait of young women being painted by this film, and also a joke about how nothing actually like happens in this movie, yeah hello hi it me I like songs that go everywhere and movies that go nowhere.

9) 4:44, by Jay-Z: Everything everyone is saying about this album is correct. I initially balked at the concept of a response album to Lemonade, but I never considered that the word "response" was being used as shorthand for "detail of Jay-Z's emotional response." It's not just that it's a rapper going through his life and loves and considering how he failed, it's that it's Jay-Z, who has spent the last five years rapping about how many yachts he owns. (And it's also just that any rapper this side of Rhymesayers is being this introspective. Like damnit man this is our thing, how dare you be better at this than us.) And just like Lemonade, this is a really fucking good album, and even if it deals with difficult topics, it doesn't handle them in a difficult way, this is an album I'm excited to return to.

10) Singles, by Future Islands: Maybe I'm just not remembering The Far Field well enough, but this man was doing some things with his voice I don't remember doing on The Far Field. There are moments where he dips into this soft growl that are so out-of-place in the middle of these dreamy synthpop tracks yet don't feel jarring, always sort of feel logical. (One would assume the band knows how to structure songs around the things the dude wants to do with his voice. It's weird how bands that are good know how to write songs!) And, gosh, the world has been saying this for a thousand years, but "Seasons (Waiting on You)" is just such an absolutely perfect song.

11) Heart Beat, by Dami Im: Let's go back to Souled Out for a little bit, because if I'm going to listen to something mid-tier, I'd rather listen to something overdramatic than understated. Something like this is what I can get into, All The Singing over the most trashy pop production, not vibing over droning electronic beats. This isn't to suggest that this album is better than Souled Out, Souled Out is probably better on an objective basis, just that this is the sort of thing which more easily draws me in. I am always going to be into a young woman singing joyously about how super a certain emotion (in this case, Love) is. This was a fun 35 minutes or so. I prefer having fun sometimes!

[astudyinthink-blog1]

The Trump Era: We're In This Together

That's it folks, the dreaded date of January 20th, 2017 has come and is just about gone. It is 10 pm and the excitement (or outrage) that has been building for the last few months has finally begun to wind down. The original plan, when I sat down to begin writing, was to continue my thoughts on college education. After a few minutes of scrolling through my Facebook feed, it seemed to be a little more appropriate to put that idea on hold for the moment and turn my attention to the events of today.

Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States. The phrase rolls awkwardly off my tongue and sort of just hangs in the air, suspended in disbelief. I'll be the first to admit that never in my wildest dreams did I see this coming. My first real memories of Donald Trump were from when I was in high school, watching him scream "You're fired!" from across the table to a contestant on his reality television show. I knew nothing about him, nor did I care, really (as a teenager, I can't say I cared about much...but I digress). Fast forward to the summer of 2015 when Trump announced his candidacy, I was one of the millions who thought it was some sort of elaborate joke. Scenes from 'The Apprentice' ran through my head and I thought it was a matter of time before he was quickly overtaken by his more experienced and more qualified peers. As the Trump Campaign started gaining steam, as he started winning, and as he eventually claimed the presidency this past November, I didn't know how to react. Even today, after the inauguration has ceased and all the oaths have been taken, I'm still in a state of relative shock. That just happened. Donald Trump: businessman, reality TV star, and now President of the United States. Whoa.

I have many different types of people with whom I associate, with an even more diverse group of 'friends' on Facebook. They are from all around the world and come from all walks of life. I enjoy this diversity because it means a healthy exposure to other values, beliefs, and opinions for me. Throughout the last year or so, I've been able to observe the impact that Trump's presidency run has had on others. This election has been so polarizing, every other post on my Facebook feed is either wildly progressive or staunchly conservative. I've nearly gotten whiplash from how jarring it's been to just scroll down a few pages. If my own personal feed is any indication of how ideologically divided the country is (which, spoiler alert, it is) then I think we have more to worry about than just who is sitting in the Oval Office.

A House Divided

"A house divided against itself cannot stand," are (only some) of the famous words shared by President Abraham Lincoln. He uttered these words in a speech at the Republican State Convention in 1858 during turbulent times--much like today. I have heard this quoted many times, most recently in 2014's "The Lego Movie." Albeit, it was more of a parody, but the point is that this quote has become somewhat of a regular in modern American culture. Most people, including me, would safely assume that this is in reference to political beliefs. With the use of the two-party political system here in the U.S., it's only logical that there would be a wide division in political beliefs. Republican vs. democrat, conservative vs. progressive, left vs. right, etc. With American values being framed this way, it's not hard to see why there is such strong opposition coming from either side. It's reminiscent of the "Star Wars" approach to morality, with the dark side vs. the light side of the force. This duality causes each side to believe that they are right and, by default, the other side is wrong. This concept works in a movie where there are two opposing forces battling each other for control of the galaxy, but it can't work if the two opposing forces are actually on the same team. It can't work because the team would implode. This was Lincoln's warning to the nation: if this division doesn't stop, the country would be destined for inevitable ruin. But, the way I see it, he wasn't talking about a division in political beliefs, that always has and always will be there. He was talking about something a little different: deviation from the common goal of unity. Lincoln faced this issue as President in the 1860's, and it has reared it's ugly head once again.

We Put the 'Us' in 'Trust'

Differences in opinion are human nature and therefore a part of life. Building a family, a team, a community, or a nation requires individuals to come together and cooperate. This is important because cooperation doesn't mean complete conformation. Differing talents, beliefs, and ideas among members actually strengthens a team. In reality, a team can function well and succeed even if every single member has differing personal beliefs. In short, not every member of a football team needs to be the same religion in order to be successful, and that goes for a nation too. However, the one characteristic that is absolutely necessary is the discipline to place a common goal before personal desires. 

The big problem that I see with our country is that people are more concerned with being right than they are with working toward a common goal. There are many times in my marriage where I disagree with my wife--from something important as finances to something trivial like what the definition of "do the dishes" is (for the record, she includes cleaning the cupboards, counters, and kitchen table as part of "the dishes." Pure madness). We each have very specific ways of doing things that are, at times, at odds with one another. If we valued being right above our common goal of building a family together, I would be at home alone, happily washing JUST the dishes. My wife and I don't have to conform to one another on every little thing and I'm happy because that would be incredibly boring. But, what we do need to agree on is that no matter how we feel at a particular moment in time, building a family together in unity is the highest priority. In this same way, our common goal as a nation should be establishing a UNIFIED land of freedom that protects an individuals rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This practice has nothing to do with your faith, your race, your sexual orientation, or your political affiliation. It has everything to do with our nation's future. Andrew Carnegie once said: 

"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."

In one way or another, this entire election process has taken a toll on EVERYONE. It was a knock-down, drag out ordeal that had us all at each other's throats. How about we each take a step back and breathe for a second. This is a great country with so much opportunity and so much freedom. (Hell, Donald Trump is President--if that's not a testament to the enormous amounts of opportunity available in this country then I don't know what is!) But in all the hate, name-calling, and finger-pointing I think we forgot that we're really all on the same side. We're all licking our own metaphorical wounds. We're in this together and we always have been. So, in our own little way, let us be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. If you want to see less hatred in this country, be kind to a stranger instead of making fun of their mama through the comment section.  If you want to see less corruption, be honest with yourself and others. If you want to see less violence, give someone a hug that needs it or show a little patience to your spouse or children. Whether you voted for Trump or not, we still need ALL of us to keep America great.

[technologicalsanbustech-blog]

Iphone x..

After months of hype, endless speculation, and a wave of last-minute rumors about production delays, the iPhone X is finally here. Apple says it’s a complete re imagining of what the iPhone should be, 10 years after the original revolutionized the world. That means some fundamental aspects of the iPhone are totally different here — most notably, the home button and fingerprint sensor are gone, replaced by a new system of navigation gestures and Apple’s new Face ID unlocking system. These are major changes.

New i Phones and major changes usually command a ton of hype, and Apple’s pushing the hype level around the iPhone X even higher than usual, especially given the new thousand-dollar starting price point. For the last few years, we've said some variation of "it's a new iPhone" when we’ve reviewed these devices. But Apple wants this to be the beginning of the next 10 years. It wants the iPhone 10 to be more than just the new iPhone. It wants it to be the beginning of a new generation of iPhone. That's a lot to live up to.

This review is going to be a little different, at least initially: Apple gave most reviewers less than 24 hours with the iPhone X before allowing us to talk about it. So consider this a working draft. These are my opening thoughts after a long, intense day of testing the phone, but I’ll be updating everything in a few days after we’re able to test performance and battery life, do an in-depth camera comparison, and generally live with the iPhone X in a more realistic way. Most importantly: please ask questions in the comments! I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can in the final, updated review.

But for now — here it goes.

Design

At a glance, the iPhone X looks so good one of our video editors kept saying it looked fake. It’s polished and tight and clean. My new favorite Apple thing is that the company managed to move all the regulatory text to software, leaving just the word “iPhone” on the back. The screen is bright and colorful and appears to be laminated tighter than previous iPhone's, so it looks like the pixels are right on top. Honestly, it does kind of look like a live 3D render instead of an actual working phone.

The iPhone X basically looks like a living 3D render

But it is a real phone, and it’s clear it was just as challenging to actually build as all the rumors suggested. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not flawless. There’s a tiny sharp ridge between the glass back and the chrome frame that I feel every time I pick up the phone. That chrome frame seems destined to get scratched and dinged, as every chrome Apple product tends to do. The camera bump on the back is huge; a larger housing than the iPhone 8 Plus fitted onto a much smaller body and designed to draw attention to itself, especially on my white review unit. There are definitely going to be people who think it’s ugly, but it’s growing on me.

There’s no headphone jack, which continues to suck on every phone that omits it, but that’s the price you pay for a bezel-less screen with a notch at the top. Around the sides, you’ll find the volume buttons, the mute switch, and the sleep / wake button. The removal of the home button means there are a few new button combinations to remember: pressing the top volume button and the sleep / wake button together takes a screenshot; holding the sleep button opens Siri; and you turn the phone off by holding either of the volume buttons and the sleep button for several seconds and then sliding to power down.

And, of course, there’s the notch in the display — what Apple calls the “sensor housing.” It’s ugly, but it tends to fade away after a while in portrait mode. It’s definitely intrusive in landscape, though. It makes landscape in general pretty messy. Less ignorable are the bezels around the sides and bottom of the screen, which are actually quite large. Getting rid of almost everything tends to draw attention to what remains, and what remains here is basically a thick black border all the way around the screen, with that notch set into the top.

I personally think the iPhone 4 is the most beautiful phone of all time, and I’d say the iPhone X is in third place in the iPhone rankings after that phone and the original model. It’s a huge step up from the surfboard design we’ve been living with since the iPhone 6, but it definitely lacks the character of Apple’s finest work. And… it has that notch.

Display

The iPhone X is Apple’s first phone to use an OLED display, after years of Apple LCD's setting the standard for the industry. OLED displays allow for thinner phones, but getting them to be accurate is a challenge: Samsung phones tend to be over saturated to the point of neon, Google’s Pixel 2 XL has a raft of issues with viewing angles and muted colors, and the new LG V30 has problems with uneven back-lighting.

Apple’s using a Samsung-manufactured OLED panel with a Pen-tile pixel layout on the iPhone X, but it’s insistent that it was custom-engineered and designed in-house. Whatever the case, the results are excellent: the iPhone X OLED is bright, sharp, vibrant without verging into parody, and generally a constant pleasure to look at. Apple’s True Tone system automatically adjusts color temperature to ambient light, photos are displayed in a wider color gamut, and there’s even Dolby Vision HDR support, so iTunes movies mastered in HDR play with higher brightness and dynamic range.

It’s just a terrific display

I did notice some slight color shifting off-axis, but never so much that it bothered me; I generally had to go looking for it. And compared to the iPhone 8 Plus LCD, it seems like a slightly cooler display over all, but only when I held the two side by side. Overall, it’s just a terrific display.

Unfortunately, the top of the display is marred by that notch, and until a lot of developers do a lot of work to design around it, it’s going to be hard to get the most out of this screen. I mean that literally: a lot of apps don’t use most of the screen right now.

Apps that haven’t been updated for the iPhone X run in what you might call “software bezel” mode: huge black borders at the top and bottom that basically mimic the iPhone 8. And a lot of apps aren’t updated yet: Google Maps and Calendar, Slack, the Delta app, Spotify, and more all run with software bezels. Games like CSR Racing and Sonic the Hedgehog looked particularly silly. It’s fine, but it’s ugly, especially since the home bar at the bottom of the screen glows white in this mode.

Some apps almost look right, but then you realize they’re actually just broken

Apps that haven’t been specifically updated for the iPhone X, but use Apple’s iOS autolayout system will fill the screen, but wacky things happen: Dark Sky blocks out half the status bar with a hardcoded black bar of its own, Uber puts your account icon over the battery indicator, and the settings in the Halide camera app get obscured by the notch and partially tucked into the display’s bunny ears. It almost looks right, but then you realize it’s actually just broken.

Apps that have been updated for the iPhone X all have different ways of dealing with the notch that sometimes lead to strange results, especially in apps that play video. Instagram Stories don’t fill the screen; they have large gray borders on the top and bottom. YouTube only has two full-screen zoom options, so playing the Last Jedi trailer resulted in either a small video window surrounded by letter- and pillar-boxing or a full-screen view with the notch obscuring the left side of the video. Netflix is slightly better, but you’re still stuck choosing between giant black borders around your video or the notch.

Landscape mode on the iPhone X is generally pretty messy: the notch goes from being a somewhat forgettable element in the top status bar to a giant interruption on the side of the screen, and I haven’t seen any apps really solve for it yet. And the home bar at the bottom of the screen often sits over the top of content, forever reminding you that you can swipe to go home and exit the chaos of landscape mode forever.

I’m sure all of this will get solved over time, but recent history suggests it might take longer than Apple or anyone would like; I still encounter apps that aren’t updated for the larger iPhone 6 screen sizes. 3D Touch has been around for years, but I can’t think of any app that makes particularly good use of it. Apple’s rolled out a lot of screen design changes over the years, and they take a while to settle in. We’ll just have to see how it goes with the iPhone X.

Cameras

I haven’t had a lot of time to play with the cameras on the iPhone X, but the short answer is that they look almost exactly like the cameras on the iPhone 8. Both the telephoto and wide angle lenses have optical image stabilization (compared to just the wide angle on the 8 Plus), and the TrueDepth system on the front means the front camera can take portrait mode selfies. It’s nice.

iPhone X rear camera (left) / Pixel 2 XL rear camera (right)

Of course, the main thing the front camera can do is take Animoji, which are Apple’s animated emoji characters. It’s basically built-in machinima, and probably the single best feature on the iPhone X. Most importantly, they just work, and they work incredibly well, tracking your eyes and expressions and capturing your voice in perfect sync with the animation. Apple’s rolled out a lot of weird additions to iMessage over the years, but Animoji feel much stickier than sending a note with lasers or adding stickers or whatever other gimmicks have been layered on. And while iMessage remains a golden palace of platform lock-in, Animoji are notably cross-platform: they work in iMessage, can be sent as videos over MMS, or exported as MOV files. Nice.

Face ID: it works, mostly

The single most important feature of the iPhone X is Face ID, the system that unlocks the phone by recognizing your face. Even that’s an understatement: the entire design and user experience of the iPhone X is built around Face ID. Face ID is what let Apple ditch the home button and Touch ID fingerprint sensor. The Face ID sensor system is housed in the notch. The Apple Pay user flow has been reworked around Face ID. Apple’s Animoji animated emoji work using the Face ID sensors.

If Face ID doesn’t work, the entire promise of the iPhone X falls apart.

The good news is that Face ID mostly works great. The bad news is that sometimes it doesn’t, and you will definitely have to adjust the way you think about using your phone to get it to a place where it mostly works great.

Face ID is cutting-edge tech, but the fundamental concept is pretty simple: it’s basically a tiny Xbox Kinect. An infrared projector flashes out thousands of tiny dots that cover your face, and the front camera clicks on, captures that image, and turns it into a depth map. That map — not an actual image of your face — is stored locally on the iPhone X’s Secure Enclave, which is the same place Apple stored Touch ID fingerprint data.

Setting up Face ID is ridiculously simple — much simpler than setting up Touch ID on previous iPhones. The phone displays a circular border around your face, and you simply move until a series of lines around that circle turn green. (Apple suggests you move your nose around in a circle, which is adorable.) Do that twice, and you’re done: Face ID will theoretically get better and better at recognizing you over time, and track slow changes like growing a beard so you don’t have to re-enroll. Drastic changes, like shaving that beard off, might require you to enter your passcode, however.

Face ID should also work through most sunglasses that pass infrared light, although some don’t. And you can definitely make it fail if you put on disguises, but I’d rather have it fail than let someone else through.

In my early tests, Face ID worked well indoors: sitting at my desk, standing in our video studio, and waiting in line to get coffee. You have to look at it head-on, though: if it’s sitting on your desk you have to pick up the phone and look at it, which is a little annoying if you’re used to just putting your finger on the Touch ID sensor to check a notification.

You also can’t be too casual about it: I had a lot of problems pulling the iPhone X out of my pocket and having it fail to unlock until Apple clarified that Face ID works best at a distance of 25 to 50 centimeters away from your face, or about 10 to 20 inches. That’s closer than I usually hold my phone when I pull it out of my pocket to check something, which means I had to actively think about holding the iPhone X closer to my face than every other phone I’ve ever used. “You’re holding it wrong” is a joke until it isn’t, and you can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong.

You can definitely hold the iPhone X wrong

That’s a small problem, though, and I think it’ll be easy to get used to. The other problem is actually much more interesting: almost all of the early questions about Face ID centered around how it would work in the dark, but it turns out that was exactly backwards. Face ID works great in the dark, because the IR projector is basically a flashlight, and flashlights are easy to see in the dark. But go outside in bright sunlight, which contains a lot of infrared light, or under crappy florescent lights, which interfere with IR, and Face ID starts to get a little inconsistent.

I took a walk outside our NYC office in bright sunlight, and Face ID definitely had issues recognizing my face consistently while I was moving until I went into shade or brought the phone much closer to my face than usual. I also went to the deli across the street, which has a wide variety of lights inside, including a bunch of overhead florescent strips, and Face ID also got significantly more inconsistent.

I’ve asked Apple about this, and I’ll update this review with their answers along with more detailed test results, but for now I’d say Face ID definitely works well enough to replace Touch ID, but not so well that you won’t run into the occasional need to try again.

Recent Apple products have tended to demand people adapt to them instead of being adapted to people, and it was hard not to think about that as I stood in the sunlight, waving a thousand-dollar phone ever closer to my face.

Software

There’s a lot of new hardware in the iPhone X, but it’s still running iOS 11 — albeit with some tweaks to navigation to accommodate the lack of a home button. You swipe up from the bottom to go home, swipe down from the right to bring up (down?) Control Center, and swipe down from the left to open the Notifications pane. That pane also has buttons for the flashlight and camera; in a twist, they require 3D Touch to work, so they feel like real buttons. It’s neat, but also breaks the 3D Touch paradigm. It’s the only place the entire system where 3D Touch acts like a left click instead of a right click. It’s emblematic of how generally fuzzy iOS has become with basic interface concepts, I think.

Switching apps is fun and simple: you can either swipe up and hold to bring up all your apps in a card-like deck, or just quickly swipe left and right on the home bar to bounce through them one at a time.

And… those are basically the changes to iOS 11 on the iPhone X, apart from the various notch-related kerfuffles. If you’ve been using iOS for a while and iOS 11 for the past month, nothing here will surprise you. Apple might have completely rethought how you unlock the iPhone X, but it’s still not giving up on that grid of app icons or making notifications more powerful or even allowing the weather app icon to display a live temperature. Siri is still Siri. If you’re buying an iPhone X expecting a radical change to your iPhone experience, well, you probably won’t get it. Unless you really hate unlocking your phone.

The iPhone X is clearly the best iPhone ever made. It’s thin, it’s powerful, it has ambitious ideas about what cameras on phones can be used for, and it pushes the design language of phones into a strange new place. It is a huge step forward in terms of phone hardware, and it has the notch to show for it. If you’re one of the many people who preordered this thing, I think you’ll be happy, although you’ll be going on the journey of figuring out when and how Face ID works best with everyone else.

It’s a new iPhone

But if you didn’t preorder, I suspect you might not feel that left out for a while. The iPhone X might be a huge step forward in terms of hardware, but it runs iOS 11 just the same as other recent iPhones, and you won’t really be missing out on anything except Animoji. Face ID seems like it’s off to a good start, but it’s definitely inconsistent in certain lighting conditions. And until your favorite apps are updated, you won’t be able to make use of that entire beautiful display.

All that adds up to the thing you already know: the iPhone X is a very expensive iPhone. For a lot of people, it’ll be worth it. For a lot of people, it’ll seem ridiculous. But fundamentally, it’s a new iPhone, and that means you probably already know if you want to spend a thousand dollars on one.

Because this review isn’t final, we’re not scoring the iPhone X yet. Leave your questions and comments below, and we’ll try to address as many of them in our final review as we can. We’ll add the score at that time as well.