#i think coda is a persona created for the game

[mail-me-a-snail]

what i really enjoy about the beginner's guide is that davey (the character) does not play any of coda's games as they were meant to be played.

he is always finding some way to subvert them because he either has 1) no patience for coda's antics and/or 2) he already has an assumed idea of what the game should be about, and he forces that idea onto the game. it's like coda says: davey puts lamp posts in all his games, bc the lamp post symbolizes a meaning.

the lamp post does not mean anything; it itself is a symbol of meaning. davey projects hard onto coda, supposes that because he sees himself in coda's games, coda must also be depressed, anxious, he must also hate himself.

that must be the only explanation for any of them.

and it just. boggles my mind how the beginner's guide is always taken very literally, when it's really just an exploration on the relationship btwn a person and the art they're consuming; how someone who likes something can see that thing not for what it is, but what they think it to be.

[miaouerie]

[coda] a pyrrhic victory/an elpidian daydream

this coda marks my first multichapter fic wrapped up and completed!!! so here’s some more related ramblings as a way for me to commemorate this milestone n___n

with the nonlinear narrative I thought I’d include a linked timeline for the chapters in case anyone (like me lol) wants to read the story in chronological order. then there’s some further explanation of what I’ve dubbed ~the jeron’s death conspiracy~ and notes from characterization I wasn’t able to include directly in the story, but were still important regardless...

furthermore, I want to thank @ninelanterns, @atthelamppost, and @sadieandor for following along with this story, as well as anyone else who came along for the adventure. this is definitely a darkfic as far as rebelcaptain goes but I hope that both endings were satisfying in their own ways !!

1. an actual chronological table of contents

Before Cassian is reaped:

day 15

Cassian’s time in the Games:

days 2, 9, 5, 18

What came after that:

days 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 22, 26◆

Jeron dies:

days 20, 8, 25

Jyn is reaped and Cassian mentors her:

days 1, 3, 4, 12, 10, 16, 17◆, 19◆, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30

After Jyn wins her Games:

bonus chapter, day 31

◆ = chapters that are about trauma concurrent to most of the story, and loosely placed chronologically

2. the Jeron conspiracy

I decided to do a summary for this because I changed my plan slightly after posting day 8: “don’t say goodbye”/abandoned due to some inspiration from @ninelanterns; originally I was going to have snow have cassian brainwashed into genuinely believing that irga and his father were killed by someone with a grudge against them and the capitol (aka someone closely related to a tribute who died under their mentorship) in order to use him as a mouthpiece against those plotting against the capitol; the angst would’ve been from him finding out the truth and hating that his dad’s suicide was used for the capitol’s means. but then I got the idea to have snow brainwash cassian into believing that the “accident” his father and irga died in was actually his fault, because he told jeron the truth of what snow was doing to him in the capitol:

Snow sells Cassian “under the table” until he turns 19, which is when he has Cassian adopt a new persona that can be better capitalized on. Jeron realizes that Cassian’s faking it, suspects that Cassian has been hiding his victimhood this entire time, and when he confirms it realizes there’s no other way to get Cassian out of it; Snow certainly won’t let him sub in to mentor. Suicide is his solution to both Cassian’s problem and his guilt over not being able to protect his son.

Snow has Irga killed in the same way that Jeron kills himself to let Cassian and Lila know that Snow knows it was a suicide. Suicide is the ultimate refutation of Snow’s power—as well as the complete antithesis to any victor’s innate clinging to survival—so Snow has it covered up: Cassian, as one of two people to know the truth about Jeron’s suicide and Irga’s death, is tortured and brainwashed into believing that Jeron and Irga were killed in a power plant explosion as retribution for him disobeying Snow. Doing so serves two purposes: installing the cover-up and guarantees Cassian’s submission.

Before his death Jeron wrote a suicide note, knowing that he couldn’t kill himself and leave Cassian without an explanation. He knows that Snow will have their house stripped and searched, so he hides the note in what was designated to be Cassian’s house. He couldn’t have known it would be the one thing that would break through the brainwashing; if Cassian hadn’t found it, he would have continued to believe that it was all his fault.

Draven does his own investigation into Jeron and Irga’s deaths after witnessing the whiplash that was Cassian’s first three years as an unwilling victor whore, his outrageous personality flip after turning ninteen, and how his demeanor changed after undergoing “therapy” to cope with Jeron’s death. He finds out that Jeron’s death was a suicide, Irga’s death was retribution, and that Snow has an entire program to monetize and exploit victors after their Games.

3. getting from day 1 to 31?!

when I originally thought of this AU it was more about the angst that growing up in the limelight of the capitol as the son of a victor would be like, with constant camera crews as cassian was growing up, betting pools on when he was going to be reaped, etc. and more of an emphasis on the issues that cassian (as part of the pseudo-celebrity class that victors occupy in the capitol) would have trying to promote this fake relationship with jyn during the games to save her. there was also going to be a straight downer ending, with the closing scene being cassian telling jyn that they have to fake a relationship now in front of the cameras and jyn having a “what have you done?” moment

I deliberately did not go in depth with what jeron’s life as a victor was like, partly because plotting both jyn and cassian’s hunger games was already a Lot (I found out pretty quickly that you have to start with planning the arena first, in order to plan tribute deaths and sponsor gifts...) but jeron was an underdog winner, as are most of the victors from non-career districts. lila was pregnant around the time that jeron was reaped and esperanza, their first child, was born some time before jeron’s victory tour. snow had their daughter killed because of something jeron did/didn’t do on the tour; even though jeron and lila are shaken from the loss they agree to be open to having another child, provided that jeron doesn’t do anything to put the child at risk ever again.... but cassian would’ve gotten reaped regardless because there is no way snow wouldn’t have exploited the family drama!!! but cassian’s reaping creates a rift that is referenced in day 15: accidents. and even though jeron is successful in saving cassian that isn’t the end of it; while lila isn’t privy to what cassian is going through she can feel a marked difference each year he comes back in the way that mothers do, as well as the tension between father and son (cassian’s fear of jeron finding out as he’s dragged deeper and deeper vs. jeron’s suspicion that something wrong is happening that has to do with cassian), which all culminates in the year that cassian turns nineteen with jeron’s death. when her husband arrived in district 5 before cassian did he didn’t tell lila about their son being a horndog in the capitol, but lila seeing cassian after he finally gets back five weeks later confirms her worst fears. then she’s the one that discovers jeron’s body and is present when the peacekeepers come to take cassian back to the capitol. her son is gone for a month....... then when he comes back he’s spouting lies about jeron’s death even though both of them saw the body??? yeah, that’s why she nopes on out of victors’ village. after jeron’s death her and cassian don’t see each other for four years until cassian brings jyn home from the games

jyn’s backstory came together quickly but I had considered having bodhi be one of the tributes who died under cassian’s mentorship. bodhi and jyn would’ve been close friends so jyn would have already had that vendetta against cassian; it would’ve made hitting that original ending easier but having jyn be against cassian from the very start would’ve made it less plausible that they could earn each other’s trust before the start of jyn’s games............. while I wanted this story to be dark and depressing I still wanted it to have a reciprocated rebelcaptain end game, so :’)

it wasn’t until day 28 (the cassian/finnick noncon) that I got an idea for a not-so-horrible ending, and I blame the completely depressingly hopeless whump in that chapter for making me think “hmm maybe this shouldn’t end terribly” :’D btw, if anyone noticed I forgot annie cresta is in canon the 70th hunger games victor. for someone who’s neurotic about looking up details I have no idea how this fact escaped me because I didn’t notice until at least halfway through whumptober, so we’ll just say in this AU she’s the 71st victor. this weaves in nicely with my headcanon that after snow saw how easily cassian was manipulated when someone he loved was on the line, he had annie reaped to exert more control over finnick (which happens to be my favorite kind of odesta fic tbh). anyway after writing 3k of depressing andair (andor/odair ship name? ok i’m shutting up) cassian/finnick I had a lovely mental image of cassian and jyn cuddling on the train back home to district 5, relieved and alive, and thought that would be a more uplifting note to end on. then I remembered that I was writing this for whumptober, and decided to write the terrible ending too :’)

4. some chapter commentary because why not

[ETA later!]

5. is there no escape?

yes!!! yes they do escape:

in a pyrrhic victory, post-day 31, draven succeeds in absconding with cassian and meeting up with jyn, saw, lyra, and the rest of their resistance cell (an underground, pan-panem organization fittingly called.... the alliance). draven has to cut out cassian’s implant before they rendezvous with the group, which he ropes a medical professional into doing (he may or may not kill them afterwards); it’s the only mark cassian bears on his body until he starts getting freckles from being in the sun again. similar to mockingjay in how peeta’s hijacking was treated with therapy in district 13, cassian undergoes actual, legitimate therapy after he and draven settle in with the alliance HQ. draven hovers anxiously for the first several sessions because “therapy” in the capitol has a stigma, even before he read the term “extensive in-patient therapy” in cassian’s intendance records, and it does take a good while before they make any remarkable progress. but unlike katniss and peeta cassian is alright in jyn’s presence, and in fact prefers it. they’re almost always seen together, and while jyn has a good amount of guilt for leaving him behind the first time her motivation for staying with him is out of a genuine desire to help him get better so they can be with each other the same way they were in an elpidian daydream again.

in happily ever after!an elpidian daydream, cassian and jyn are able to escape together in between arriving home in district 5 and what was supposed to be jyn’s victory tour. jyn was never aware of what snow did with desirable victors because it’s really only the top 1% of panem and the victors who know about it; she and cassian escape after he tells her that he wants to leave with her, but he doesn’t tell her the real reason why he wants to escape until much later and jyn never sees the recording of cassian and finnick (but he does tell her it exists when he’s explaining the details of how snow exerts his control over the victors). their relationship progresses steadily, but the secret doesn’t come out until jyn points out that cassian is extremely passive in bed and only mirrors her desires. there’s varying attitudes towards sex in the districts vs. the libertine views in the capitol but cassian’s shame stems from his powerlessness in what he had to do Before. he receives therapy for it but jyn is patient and firm with reminding him that he had absolutely zero choice in the matter, and that she could never hate or be disgusted with him for it. there’s a lot to work through there as a result of cassian having to lie to himself about it for the first couple of years of it happening and then willingly choosing to engage with it when he was trying to save jyn, but their relationship comes out all the more stronger for it. as for what happens to draven?.... because this is the happily ever after ending I like to think he’s able to stay in the capitol and work as an agent codenamed fulcrum 🤪🤙 and that after his extraction when things get too dangerous for him in the capitol he and cassian are able to reunite again as part of the alliance/rebellion !!

[dropintomanga]

Regarding That CODA Anti-Piracy Campaign

So I found out that this is a thing.

CODA (Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Agency) decided to do a manga campaign featuring 16 manga stories from notable mangaka (list of mangaka can be be found here) about anti-piracy in order to stop readers from reading manga on scanlation and/or unofficial raw sites. The theme of every manga in this campaign is basically read legal manga with lessons featuring each respective mangaka’s series and characters (i.e. Adachitoka and Noragami’s Yato and Yukine). 

As of July 3, 2020, all the comics are out. They give off important messages about anti-piracy with humor, anger, and grace. I just don’t know who they are trying to convince at this point.

A big problem is the issue of awareness and education when it comes to topics that no one may care about (yet). I see this in mental health. While we have things like Mental Health Awareness Month, suicide rates continue to rise, people with mental illness continue to be ignored and the mental health system continues to be in shambles. The problem with promoting “awareness” is that it doesn’t point out notable actions one can take after hearing about what they are now aware of. It just doesn’t feel measurable. There are fine people who want to know how to help, but you need to tell them how. 

Now there’s one CODA manga story that does tell people to look for legal manga apps/volumes containing an official sign of legitimacy, which is labeled “ABJ - Authorized Books of Japan.” But almost all of these stories don’t really provide useful advice on how to support the Japanese manga industry. They just tell you to do the right thing.

I worry about the hyperbole shouting in some of the manga. One manga has a character going “Do you want manga to be wiped off the face of the earth!?” in an effort to shame someone who read illegal manga on their phone. Another character in another manga said that the industry loses 3.2 billion yen per year (a number I find very hard to believe). There is a big danger to manga in Japan, but piracy is only part of the picture. 

There’s also something that bothers me - some mangaka featured in the campaign know that a good number of fans are naive about pirated manga and see the good in people. However, while there are multitudes of legal manga options available in Japan, the same can’t be said for most of the world that’s not America, France, England or any notable first-world country. Region locks are still a thing and Japan is super-notorious for this.

For an organization that’s focused on overseas promotion of content, region-locking shouldn’t be a thing if you do see the good in people who are willing to support manga as best they can.

I wish mangaka didn’t have to resort to drawing stories telling fans to not pirate their works. I know there are fans who wish a service that has everything (Spotify, Crunchyroll, Netflix, etc.) is the perfect solution. I just don’t know if it will make a difference because reading isn’t highly valued as a leisure activity overseas compared to Japan. The number of anime viewers still dwarf over the number of manga readers.  

I feel like nothing is going to change. However, I do have one suggestion that probably will never be taken. Train mangaka to be more of a visual online content creator-type a la Twitch streamers. With art streams being more of a thing on Twitch, the timing is perfect. This idea came to me as I listened to a fascinating podcast about the psychology of Twitch donations. Basically, it talked about why do Twitch users donate money and subscribe to streamers. 

There was this caveat about research on Twitch donations in that the people who donate/subscribe often make low-to-moderate income. So what compels them to give? Why are they willing to support streamers? While content is still a major reason, another key is an emotional connection that’s experienced via the visual medium that is the stream. There’s some kind of meaningful interaction via Twitch chat as streamers do mention users by name and thanking them for the support.

The researcher in the featured podcast believes the days of “the internet is always free” are becoming a thing of the past. This is true as more industries are figuring out how to make money via the internet that works for them and their consumers. The researcher also argued that having just content isn’t enough to make money on the internet. She said that if you’re not going to make easy all-in-one solutions (i.e. a Netflix-like manga app), then you better deliver added value to the consumer that isn’t just more content and makes them feel appreciative.

Right now, there’s very little-to-no visual emotional connection/community between the manga industry/creators and the fans at all. Everything’s all about content without feeling visual attachment to the manga creator. I see manga publishers promoting special editions with extra goods like OVAs/charms/etc. Those feel more like incentives than rewards as they don’t really change fans’ behavior. There has to be some added value alongside the manga in the form of community (this is one major reason why Crunchyroll has thrived). Maybe overseas fans need to feel that their voices really matter to mangaka or want mangaka on a video platform to acknowledge them in a para-social kind of way in order for them to provide some monetary support.

In Japan, mangaka get letters from fans and they talk about them from time-to-time. Sometimes, those letters do get mentioned online. I would love to see talks of fan letters via video form as a way to reach online audiences.

I do feel that manga publishers outside of Japan are trying their best as they do get mangaka and manga editors to come over to their countries. They are generating community as best they can, but they are still limited in scope since they don’t have control of what the entire Japanese manga industry says. I don’t envy anyone who works in manga because of this.

To be fair, I can’t expect every mangaka to start streaming on platforms like Twitch/Nico due to privacy reasons and general shyness. Sure, there’s Twitter, but how often does social media lead to donations? Rarely. Mangaka also have no time to worry about what overseas readers are into when they have to worry about their own country. Publishers may not also totally understand how streaming works as promotion and the intentions of its users. Look up Atlus Japan and Persona 5 streaming as an example of Japanese companies being unnecessarily wary of streaming. Japanese companies arguably want an absurd amount of control when it comes to promoting their messages to overseas audiences.

I don’t want to bring up Stu Levy, but he once tweeted years ago that the games industry seemed better to work with than the book publishing industry. I hate to admit that there’s a grain of truth in what he said despite whatever you think of him. Seeing Japanese manga publishers continue to struggle with how to handle piracy makes think about Levy’s words. 

I think a more reasonable goal at this point is to get fans to pirate less manga over time. You can’t expect every fan to quit pirating 100% right away. It never works that way. There will be relapses and we have to be forgiving of that. Relapse is part of the healing process. Shaming someone who may continue to make mistakes from time-to-time (instead of believing they can still heal via good planning) makes them go more all-in on hiding their “bad” behaviors. I mean, as someone with mental illness, I was afraid of making mistakes as I didn’t want to be yelled at. I was told that failure was awful. It made me feel I would never be loved if I wasn’t perfect despite my best efforts. Is this something we want manga fans to experience?

CODA’s manga website URL has the word “enlightenment” in it. The only enlightening thing right now is that we still haven’t reached a solid middle ground that truly bridges manga fans and the manga industry together and financially rewards both to create a manga ecosystem that’s as good as the anime ecosystem today.

[animeandfilmotaku]

What about a curse (Kinda Howl’s Moving Castle Meta and analysis)

There seems to be a big confusion on that plot point (While perfect in other ways visually and sound wise) which my friend on the context of Sophie’s curse as we rewatch the film for a 5th or 6th time, I mean it is a good film so I am going to try to explain it based on my rambling with her which is wild

We started with a Greek myth of creation which showcase that notion of persons searching for that other as people used to be hybrids as waxed poetically by Plato

“…humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”-Plato

So it brings that notion that soulmates are longing for that other half cut off, it could be a physical sense like a companion or perhaps the self and seeking fulfilment.

In Howl’s Moving Castle it could be played differently as the search of that self and how one must improves.

In one case is the perception of self, and one must grow within it. It is not mentioned loudly in the films, but the books by Diane Wynne Jones (That which  I am not particularly keen on the books while fun, mostly on Howl, which I will express much later). Sophie’s curse is explained obviously that she has a power of words to make or break it. That power which made the broom move or continuing her aged self. (Book fans help me in that area).

About Miyazaki’s film-Sophie seen herself lowly unlike her beautiful sister Lettie (The Book has 4 sisters perhaps Miyazaki cut it down for pacing reasons) and seen working behind the scenes, almost blending to the crowd. She is even catcalled as a “mouse” which is associated with timidity and inferiority, hiding herself in the rooms, while her other colleagues gossip over trivial matters. It is plain and simple-she inherits her father’s hat shop and that is all.

But no, she seems to be transcended by a beautiful stranger, Howl which he spoke the smoothest line in the universe, which holds a much heavier brevity in the coda. So she seems entranced by him (No surprise I would be too hahah) which leads to a conversation of her sister which Howl is rumoured to eat the heart out of young impressionable girls. Which we have this conclusion of Howl- He is a womaniser and all around douche bag (Well that sounds like Gaston from Disney’s Beauty and The beast). And she  wondered if she would get that feeling of validation from him.

Perhaps it is just a figment of imagination.

As usual, she came to normal life, which she came across to The Witch of the Waste, which unfortunately carried that toxic self. Of course things did not go well and boom she is an old woman.

Yes she has the physicality of an old lady with aching bones, nasally voice and all. That is the exterior self that she seen herself lowly- fearful of the unknown and herself. Hell she even screamed to Howl in his extreme meltdown on his external appearance (Which is the funniest shit), that she is never validate for physical beauty and heck she even doubt herself for the lovely gift of the garden given by Howl.

Her goal is simple- to get the Witch of the Waste to break the spell which we found much later that she cannot do it as she made curses.

However the curse lessened when she takes action, revealing her younger self. Whenever it is the focus on the present moments, like appreciating the river or her love confession to Madame Sullivan, that she seen the good in Howl as an intelligent and compassionate person hiding beneath the mask of arrogance, or perhaps showing compassion to the now harmless Witch of the Waste and even more courageously staying resilient when Howl goes for a bloody war.

The old Sophie will cower in fear, staying behind the scenes in her father’s shop. However no, she made brave choices for her newfound family- whenever it was to provide Markl a safe space or giving a pep talk to the otherwise stubborn Calcifer. For some reason, she reminded me of the women in wartimes how they have to stay mentally strong despite grievances, of fathers, brothers, sons and even nephews by holding themselves to resourcefulness. I do not know if it is Miyazaki saw the strength in mums and aunts on it. I actually admired it, as my mum simply summarised that notion in a text when I am down “Even Sophie who thinks she’s ugly when she’s not and she let go”.

It is that power of a mindset which we need to change internally and that is a beautiful notion. That you can build resilience and strength with your found family and of course yourself.

Howl, too have that journey of himself but much different from Sophie.  Ok about the books, the reasoning I dislike the books that Howl’s full on douche mood and to the point of unlikeable.  He is just childish and whiny, and feels like a f**kboi

What Miyazaki did is a stroke of genius to make him more likeable, yes he has his childish moments. However he learnt to grow up to be a compassionate man

That notion of Howl’s childishness needs to be stripped away which is his ego and reliance on himself. Yes he fears his teacher Madame Sullivan like a monster under his bed and yes he fears for being vulnerable that it would cause much pain. Hence the small stone is actually Howl’s heart which leads him to detachment of the world, similar to Olgried Von Everenc’s immorality in exchange of his detachment to his wife Iris in the Witcher games.

He could do what he pleases, but at a price. And that price is that he become inhuman.

And it is that push from Sophie (Of course in clever disguise as a king) that we seen a growth in Howl that he no longer fearful, stirred by Sophie’s resilience. Heck the most romantic line in the film aside “I have been looking for you is this” is that “I am no longer running away because of you. “ when she plead to flee from the horrors of war

Gone the days which he hid himself in his room full of talismans and spells, and reply on impersonating different personas to hide his true self. And that true self is that he is an intelligent wizard filled with compassion and bravery as much as Sophie.

There is this bible passage that summarise Howl’s journey so beautifully

“but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. *11*When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. *12*For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”- 1 Cor 13:11-13 (NIV)

And that last act of kindness is to validate Sophie, not as a cleaning lady but a brave woman who faced all odds, in order to save him.

And I think it is a beautiful story that we must look ourselves with dignity and strength, not physical appearances. And of course we must have an agency to change oneself in order to benefit the community.

[twilightvolt]

My Favorite Anime OPs and EDs from 2010-2019

No one asked for this, but i’m doin’ it anyway cuz there’s so many songs out there that i’ve never heard anyone talk about. like, y’all sleep on Yu-Gi-Oh! apparently. lmao

Going by release year, here’s all the OPs and EDs i can remember that i luv (and still do to this day). i may or may not have gotten all the years right. hell, i’m not even sure i got the OP and ED numbers right.

It’ll go by: Song Name - Artist (Name of Anime and Which OP/ED it is) an asterisk means i REALLY like it above the rest.

Hopefully this’ll help introduce you to some new jams you missed out on! ^  ^

2010

Going My Way! ~Road to Tomorrow~ - Masaaki Endoh (Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds OP5)*

Close to You - ALvino (Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds ED4)

Future Colors - Plastic Tree (Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds ED5)

Gravity 0 - Aqua Timez (Star Driver OP)*

Never Give Up! - Sonar Pocket (Digimon Xros Wars OP)*

Period - Chemistry (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood OP4)*

Rain - SID (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood OP5)* THE. FEELS.

Uragiri no Yuuyake - THEATRE BROOK (Durarara!! OP)* Y’all remember this one? Lmao

Trust Me - Yuya Matsushita (Durarara!! ED)

Ice Cream Syndrome - Sukima Switch (Pokemon Zoroark: Master of Illusions ED)*

My Soul, Your Beats! - Lia (Angel Beats OP) WAIT HOLD ON, ANGEL BEATS WAS THIS DECADE? I THOUGHT THAT WAS 2009 OR SOMETHING. DAHEQ?

ChAngE - Miwa (BLEACH OP12)

Calling - FLOW (Heroman ED)*

SHIVER - the GazettE (Black Butler II OP)

2011

Samurai Heart (Some Like it Hot!) - SPYAIR (Gintama ED17)* And on this day I realized….SPYAIR is lit.

New World - Twill (Digimon Xros Wars OP2)

Masterpiece - Mihimaru GT (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL OP)

Boku Quest - Golden Bomber (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL ED)* I luv watching the actual ending sequence. It fits my cyber aesthetic to a T.

BRAVING! - KANAN (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL OP2)

Setsubou no Freesia (Longing Freesia) - Daizystripper (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL ED2)* I’ll be completely honest, this song has been my favorite anime theme over most, if not all others, ever since. It’s kinda held a special place in my heart as it’s got memories of what transpired during 2012 that i don’t think i’ll ever forget. From the summer trip we took down south to me creating my very first OCs, Takuya and his Charmander partner Drake, on paper, i’ll luv this song with all my heart. ^  ^

Lovers - 7!! (Seven Oops) (Naruto Shippuden OP)

Counter Identity - UNISON SQUARE GARDEN (Soul Eater Repeat Show OP)*

Ai Ga Hoshii Yo - Shion Tsuji (Soul Eater Repeat Show OP2)* WANTCHU WANTCHU, I WANT CHUU~

SHINING STAR - 9nine (Star Driver OP2)*

Crossover - 9nine (Star Driver ED2)

Sky's the Limit - Shihoko Hirata (Persona 4 the Animation OP)

We’re Not Alone - coldrain (Rainbow Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin OP)

One Reason - Fade (Deadman Wonderland OP) I can bet you right now half of y’all forgot about this show. I mean i did. Lol

Mayonaka no Orchestra - Aqua Timez (Naruto Shippuden ED16)

Hacking to the Gate - Kanako Itou (Steins;Gate OP)* THIS SONG CLEARED MY SKIN AND RAISED MY GRADES.

Ranbu no Melody - SID (BLEACH OP13)* That main chorus tho. N o i c e .

LISTEN TO THE STEREO!! - GOING UNDERGROUND (Katekyo Hitman Reborn OP8)*

Core Pride - UVERworld (Blue Exorcist OP)

2012

Mask - Aqua Timez (BLEACH ED30?)

Soul Drive - Color Bottle (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL OP3)*

Wild Child - Moumoon (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL ED3)* Whenever I hear this song, I either think of school shenanigans or, if school isn't a thing in their world, a high school AU. Lmao

Unbreakable Heart - Hideaki Takatori (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL OP4)

Artist - Vistlip (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL ED4)*

Stand By Me - Stereopony (Eureka Seven AO ED)* Ok I know some people don't wanna remember AO, but hear me out here. Lmao 

Brave Blue - FLOW (Eureka Seven AO OP2)*

Key Plus Words - Shihoko Hirata & Yumi Kawamura (Persona 4 the Animation OP2)

Harukaze - SCANDAL (BLEACH OP15)*

Crossing Field - LiSA (Sword Art Online OP) I like making SAO jokes as much as the next guy, but let's be real here. Crossing Field was still a pretty good song.

STAND UP! - Twill (Digimon Xros Wars Hunters OP)* Hunters sucked, but the OP slaps.

Kyomu Densen - ALI PROJECT (Another OP) This show gave me a temporary fear of umbrellas, but this OP is good.

Complication - ROOKiEZ is PUNK’D (Durarara!! OP2)

Light My Fire - KOTOKO (Shakugan no Shana III Final OP)

Mite Mite Kochichi - Memoiro Clover Z (Pokemon Best Wishes ED3)

2013

Dualism of Mirrors - Petite Milady (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL OP5)

GO WAY GO WAY - FoZZtone (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL ED5)

Challenge the GAME - REDMAN (Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL ED6)* I swear to god, this should’ve been the final OP rather than Wonder Wings. I really don’t like that song.

Oh, and if you wanna hear more of the lead singer's voice, he's the lead singer of GIRUGAMESH. They didn't do any anime songs while they were still active afaik, but totally check it out if you like J-Rock.

Sakura Mitsutsuki & Genjyou Destruction - SPYAIR (Gintama OP13 and Gintama: The Final Chapter OP)*

After Cherry Blossoms (all quartets lead to the?) - UNISON SQUARE GARDEN (Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta OP)*

Non-Fiction Compass - UNISON SQUARE GARDEN (Yozakura Quartet: Tsuki ni Naku OP)

Sayonara Memory - 7!! (Seven Oops) (Naruto Shippuden ED)

BLOODY STREAM - Coda (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Battle tendency OP)* I mean, how could i NOT put this song on here? Lmao

Be An Arrow! - Rica Matsumoto (Pokemon Best Wishes! OP2)

Natsumeku Sakamichi (Summerly Slope) - Daisuke (Pokemon Best Wishes DA! OP)* While the Black & White series was absolutely terrible, I can thank it for spawning some nice OPs.

Egao - Ikimono-gakari (Pokemon Genesect and the Legend Awakened ED)

Take Your Way - Livetune adding Fukase (From SEKAI NO OWARI) (Devil Survivor 2 the Animation OP)* I swear I will never get tired of this song.

Be - Song Riders (Devil Survivor 2 the Animation ED)*

Watashi no Bara wo Kaminasai - ALI PROJECT (Rozen Maiden 2013 OP)

Moshimo - Daisuke (Naruto Shippuden OP)

Burn My Dread ~Spring of Birth~ & More Than One Heart - Yumi Kawamura (Persona 3 the Movie #1 Spring of Birth OP and ED)*

Eden - Aqua Timez (Magi: the Kingdom of Magic ED)*

Out of Control - Nothing’s Carved in Stone (Psycho Pass OP2)*

HERO -Kibou no Uta- - FLOW (Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods ED)

2014

Silhouette - KANA BOON (Naruto Shippuden OP16)* Everyone rise for the weeb national anthem.

BelievexBelieve - Bulletrain (Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V OP)

ENAMEL - SID (Black Butler: Book of Circus OP)

Masayume Chasing - BoA (Fairy Tail OP15)

STRIKE BACK - BACK-ON (Fairy Tail OP16)*

Burn! - Bulletrain (Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V OP2)

DAYxDAY - BLUE ENCOUNT (Gintama OP)* Before Polaris, there was this. lol

Goya no Machiawase - Hello Sleepwalkers (Noragami OP)* I swear Noragami has great taste in OPs. lmao

Fate is in Our Hands - Lotus Juice (Persona 3 the Movie #2 Midsummer Knight's Dream OP)* Y'all know Lotus Juice makes EVERYTHING badass.

One Hand, One Heartbeat - Yumi Kawamura (Persona 3 the Movie #2 Midsummer Knight's Dream ED)* I swear I literally feel like crying every time I hear this song. It's just that powerful.

Unravel - TK from Ling Tosite Sigure (Tokyo Ghoul OP) Ok, lemme explain. I used to hate this song cuz I thought TK's singing voice was whiny as hell. But after a long, LOOOOONG time, it finally started to grow on me. I think it's because of all the song covers I've listened to and, after understanding the meaning behind the lyrics, I appreciate this song a bit more nowadays. 

V (VOLT) and MEGA V (MEGA VOLT) - Yusuke (Pokemon XY OPs 1&2)*

daze - Jin ft. MARiA from GARNiDELiA (Mekakucity Actors OP)

Monochrome - Dancing Dolls (Soul Eater NOT! OP)

2015

Saigo Made ii - Aqua Timez (Gintama ED15 i think?)

Kyouran Hey Kids! - THE ORAL CIGARETTES (Noragami Aragoto OP)* IN THIS HOUSE, WE JUST WANNA HOLD YOUR HAAAAAAND~

Getta Ban Ban (Mad-Paced Getter) - Tomohisa Sako (Pokemon XY OP3)*

XY&Z - Rica Matsumoto (Pokemon XY&Z OP)*

Raise Your Flag - MAN WITH A MISSION (Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans OP)*

Hello, World! - BUMP OF CHICKEN (Kekkai Sensen OP)*

Sugar Song and Bitter Step AKA the song everyone makes fan animated parodies of it’s opening sequence - UNISON SQUARE GARDEN (Kekkai Sensen ED)

Kirifuda (Trump Card) - Cinema Staff (Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V OP4)

Speaking - MRS. GREEN APPLE (Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V ED4)* before Great Escape from Attack on Titan and Inferno from Fire Force, there was this OP and ED. both of which i feel are better songs. lmao

Tweedia - Rei Yasuda (Pokemon Hoopa and the Clash of Ages ED)*

Diver - KANA-BOON (The Last: Naruto the Movie ED)*

Butter-Fly 2015 - Kouji Wada (Digimon Adventure Tri. OP)

Sono Chi no Kioku ~End of the World~ - JO☆STARS ~TOMMY, Coda, JIN~ (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders OP2)

Lapis Lazuli - Eir Aoi (Arslan Senki ED)*

Clattanoia - OxT (Overlord OP)*

L.L.L. - MYTH & ROID (Overlord ED)

Nazo 2015 - La PomPon (Detective Conan OP41)* Hearing this brought back memories of hearing the original during my childhood back when Cased Closed was still a thing.

Just Fly Away - EDGE of LIFE (Gundam Build Fighters Try OP2)

Flyers - BRADIO (Death Parade OP) Like Another, this was one of those where i wouldn’t have touched the show itself if my anime club didn’t watch it.

X.U. - Hiroyuki Sawano (Seraph of the End OP)*

Hikari - ViViD (Magi: the Kingdom of Magic OP2)

2016

DiVE!! - Amatsuki (Digimon Universe: Applimonsters OP)*

Ai - Ami Wajima (Digimon Universe: Applimonsters ED2)

The Day - Porno Graffitti (My Hero Academia OP)

HEROES - Brian the Sun (My Hero academia ED)

RAGE OF DUST - SPYAIR (Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans OP2)*

Believe in Myself - EDGE of LIFE (Fairy Tail OP21)*

CRAZY NOISY BIZARRE TOWN - THE DU (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable OP)

Chase - batta (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable OP2)* Screw the haters. This song is a bop.

Great Days - Karen Aoki & Daisuke Hasegawa (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable OP3) As you can see, i luv all of Jojo Part 4’s OPs. lmao

Kaze no Uta - FLOW (Tales of Zestiria the X OP)* Zestiria may have been the most uninteresting experience i’ve had in the Tales series, but at least it’s OPs are straight fire.

Dream Lantern, ZenZenZense, Sparkle and Nandemonaiya - RADWIMPS (Various themes from Your Name) I'm still miffed that they didn't kiss at the end. >:v

Re:Re: - ASIAN KUNGFU GENERATION (Erased OP)

Brave Shine - Aimer (Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works OP)*

Starting Over - Mr. Children (The Boy and the Beast ED)* Mamoru Hosoda never ceases to make me smile and/or cry, huh?

GO - BUMP OF CHICKEN (GRANBLUE FANTASY the Animation OP)

KINGS - angela (K Project OP) i don’t even know how i remembered this one. I watched K at my local anime club years ago cuz one of my friends suggested it. I barely remember what it was about, though. ^  ^’

Vision - Kusou Linkai (Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V ED5)

Light of Hope - Unknown Number (Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V OP5)

Pendulum Beat! - SUPER DRAGON (Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V OP6)*

2017

Peace Sign - Kenshi Yonezu (My Hero Academia OP2)* SURE IT’S POPULAR, BUT IT’S POPULAR FOR A REASON.

Datte Atashi no Hero - LiSA (My Hero Academia ED3)

Little Pi - Ange☆Reve (Digimon Universe: Applimonsters ED3)

Perfect World - Traffic Light (Digimon Universe: Applimonsters ED4)*

With the Wind - Hiroaki “TOMMY” Tominaga (Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS OP)* I’ll be honest, this one took some getting used to, but now i luv it!

Fake Town Baby - UNISON SQUARE GARDEN (Kekkai Sensen and Beyond OP)

Tonari Au - THE ORAL CIGARETTES (Sakurada Reset ED)*

Rain - SEKAI NO OWARI (Mary and the Witch's Flower ED)* I really liked the movie and I just luved the fantasy vibes given off by the instrumentals in this song.

Baton Road - KANA BOON (Boruto: Naruto Next Generations OP)* Y'all say Boruto is trash, but at least the theme songs still boppin'.

Boku wa Hashiri Tsuzukeru - Melofloat (Boruto: Naruto Next Generations ED3)

FEED THE FIRE - coldrain (King’s Game OP)* Thank you Fire Force for introducing me to this wonderful band. ;w;

2018

PAiNT it BLACK - BiSH (Black Clover OP2)* Never thought I'd ever find a band actually named bish. Lmao

Black Rover - Vickeblanka (Black Clover OP3)

Guess Who is Back - Kumi Koda (Black Clover OP4)* Now, if this ain't a bop fit for a triumphant return like "SURPRISE BISH I'M BACK." then idk what is. Lmao

Gamushara & Tenge Tenjou - Miyuna (Black Clover OP&ED5)* i’m mainly referring to Gamushara, but i luv Tenge Tenjou too.

ODD FUTURE - UVERworld (My Hero Academia OP4)*

Make my story - Lenny code fiction (My Hero Academia OP5)*

The Future is Now - Straightener (Digimon ReArise OP)* Yes, I know I'm cheating cuz it's a video game, but it's an opening sequence much like an anime, so yeah.

Breath - Porno Graffitti (Pokemon the Power of Us ED)

Katharsis - TK from Ling Tosite Sigure (Tokyo Ghoul OP3?)*

Here - JUNNA (The Ancient Magus Bride OP)

Renai Circulation - Kana Hanazawa (Bakemonogatari OP4) Imma be honest, i found this song through those Coldplay mashups and other memes. Lmao

I Wanna Be - SPYAIR (Gintama Shirogane no Tamashii Hen OP)

Hana Ichi Monme - BURNOUT SYNDROMES (Gintama Shirogane no Tamashii Hen ED)*

2019

Hana ga Saku Michi - THE CHARM PARK (Black Clover ED7)* I SWEAR NO ONE’S COVERED THIS SONG YET AND I’M SAD. I LUV THIS SONG.

Inferno - MRS. GREEN APPLE (Fire Force OP)

Veil - Keina Suda (Fire Force ED)* This ED gives me feels and i luv it. ;w;

MAYDAY - coldrain (Fire Force OP2)* This sounds like a song i’d hear at Hot Topic and i feel blessed. lmao

Nounai - Lenny code fiction (Fire Force ED2) I swear this anime doesn’t have a single song i don’t like. I’m not kidding. lmao

WILD SIDE - ALI (BEASTARS OP)* IN THIS HOUSE, WE DO NOT SKIP THIS OPENING I STG.

Le Zoo - YURiKA (BEASTARS ED)

Nemureru Honou (Sleeping Instincts) - YURiKA (BEASTARS ED2)*

Kawaki no Ameku - Minami (Domestic Na Kanojo OP)

Polaris - BLUE ENCOUNT (My Hero Academia OP6)* THIS IS THE BIGGEST BOP SINCE PEACE SIGN OML

Touch Off - UVERworld (The Promised Neverland OP)* This show was too creepy for me to continue, but I luv it for what it is. Also NAA NANANANANANAA NANANAAAA~

Sangenshoku - PELICAN FANCLUB (Dr. Stone OP2)* Sorry, but Good Morning World didn’t totally do it for me. I luv this OP way more tbh.

Suisou - Megumi Nakajima (Hoshiai no Sora OP)* The bits before the chorus are just so good.

1•2•3 - After the Rain (Pocket Monsters 2019 OP)

Dark Crow - MAN WITH A MISSION (Vinland Saga OP2)

MOTOR CITY - Kenichi Asai (No Guns Life OP)

Game Over - DATS (No Guns Life ED)

[thisrocksandwhy]

The Beginner’s Guide: Can I write the same thing twice?

Recently I watched Ian Danskin’s video essay on The Beginner’s Guide called “The Artist is Absent.” In it, he uses (and flawlessly explains) theories of art, language, and storytelling such as semiotics, death of the author, and enunciation theory to propose his reading of the game. Danskin suggests that the game is warning us not to mistake The Beginner’s Guide’s author for its narrator. In other words, a work of fiction should not give a reader the sense that they now know about the person who wrote it; they only know about the work itself. And I agree with this reading wholeheartedly. However, I still stand by my analysis of the game, that Davey the Narrator represents an ego that constantly criticizes the self while Coda stands for the artist’s persona that is challenged by societal norms, audience expectations, and even their own ego’s chatter. So, to reconcile the two, I’d like to make some amendments to my past article.

But first, rather than simply editing the post, I’d like to discuss whether I have a right to change it, since this idea is thematically relevant to both the game and Danskin’s video essay.

To illustrate the concept of authorial intention, Danskin asks if The Sopranos’s creator David Chase should retroactively be able to determine that Tony dies at the end of the show. Danskin’s answer to his thought experiment: “Fuck this guy!” If Chase wanted to explicitly convey this in the first place, he should have put something in the show to indicate it rather than the vague ending he did write. Full disclosure, I haven’t seen the ending of The Sopranos, but we don’t need to have seen it to get the concept. Stories are meant to be interpreted by their audiences, and authorial intention doesn’t have to be considered. People can come to conclusions just from the evidence in the text. However, historical and cultural context along with author biography are incredibly useful tools for analysis, so a text’s readings don’t always have to be isolated to the text either. This is a more complicated question of art theory that I’m not going to try to argue. I’m simply presenting the reader’s (assumedly your) perspective on this question of whether I can change my article. According to this train of thought, I could say what I now believe and would like to change, but you don’t have to consider it relevant and should judge my previous work as it was originally presented. Fuck me, right?

Now, if I were to use The Beginner’s Guide as my guide on this issue, I think the game would support an antithetical position. For interpreting and even changing his games, Coda says to Davey the narrator “Fuck this guy!” (my paraphrasing). The Beginner’s Guide questions the role of the audience in interpreting art and the artist’s responsibility to its audience. Art is usually thought of as something that is seen, something that gains value once an artist lets an audience see it. However, I suggest that art that is unseen by the public can still be valuable, specifically for the artist. Put simply, art is expression, and personal expression can be valuable without anyone to hear what was said. Coda makes games just to make them. But do I write essays just to write them? In some sense, I write these for others to read them, to express my thoughts to others and test their credibility and clarity. However, these essays are most valuable to me; I get to conjure up concepts and realize them on the page through language. I get to look back on these records of my thoughts and see how I have changed since I wrote them. These words are much more valuable to me, since I know exactly what they mean while readers will only ever get close to understanding – that’s not a knock on you, that’s simply the nature of language (Danskin simply and elegantly explains this concept as well in his essay). The Beginner’s Guide offers a similar view, that art can be valuable without ever considering its accessibility or an audience’s enjoyment of it. Here lies another complicated issue of art theory which I will not firmly debate, merely present a school of thought on the matter. With this concept in mind, though, I do have every right to improve my work so that I may more thoroughly enjoy it, and I shouldn’t have to consider you readers when I change it. Fuck you, right?

Hey by the way, I just wrote all of that, and now I’m realizing I don’t actually want to change anything. I brought up the whole “I don’t know Davey Wreden” thing in the article too (and in the title; I feel dumb).

Hi, Will here. That last bit may have come out of nowhere. Let me explain. I wrote all that at around midnight on October 2, 2016, and I’m currently reading it all again on May 30, 2019. This is gonna get meta. I’m now responding to an article I wrote about responding to an article I wrote about responding to a game (about a guy responding to a game designer). This act of responding is what I wanna talk about.

This article means something completely different to me now than it did when I started writing it. I’ve been thinking about how people reinterpret art as we gain new life experience, and how we engage in conversation not only when we create art but when we analyze it. I’m thinking about this more especially as I’m getting older, like when movies from my childhood feel very different because I’m reading into aspects I had never seen before.

Danskin’s video essay has, funnily enough, guided my thinking on this topic. His video has taught me about the audience’s role in giving art meaning and how subjective that meaning really is. Since I wrote the first half of this, I’ve rewatched that essay every few months, because it explains ideas that are fundamental to my current understanding of art. Please watch it. Really, I don’t care if you read the rest of this, it’s more important that you watch this video. Watch it. Now.

So what is my article about? What does it mean to me now? It’s about the endless conversation good art can start between artwork and audience. If a work is complicated enough and speaks to a person’s experiences on a deep, profound level, that work can be interpreted an infinite amount of different ways. And each way can be just as important and meaningful to a person. On top of that, the responses to that art can be equally valuable. Maybe this response to myself is a bit self-indulgent, but I do think it illustrates my point. I look at The Beginner’s Guide differently now because of how I’ve reconsidered it.

This piece is also about a writer who constantly rethinks his work. He’s trying to improve his thoughts and compare them to essays and thinkers that he admires. This becomes a cycle of read, analyze, respond, repeat. I’m constantly re-reading what I’ve written and checking whether I still agree with myself. In this way I aim to improve my skills in presenting a position and convincing someone of its substance.

This process exemplifies the dialectic mode: thesis (presenting a thought) -> antithesis (questioning a thought) -> synthesis (a greater understanding of the thought and the next starting point, literally the “new thesis”). This process supposedly progresses humanity’s collective intellect, as if all thought moves us towards an end goal of “the truth.” I don’t agree with this idealistic notion of truth, because to believe that is to dismiss the subjective nature of individual interpretation like I was saying before. But I do think that my understanding has evolved since I wrote the first half of this, and it’s fun to enter my previous mind and see how I’ve grown since then.

Now, I do want to answer the question I asked at the beginning of this all: Should I or should I not edit my original post?

Right now, I say no.

All art is influenced by its moment in time as well as an author’s beliefs and experiences. That author can be one person or a collaboration of personalities, all contributing to a combined philosophy which comes across as one message to the audience. John Green once said in an interview that “Writing is always an attempt at radical empathy.” I’m gonna reference this in another article (coming soon), because this thought has defined the value I find in art. Even if just for me, this article can take me back to the moment I wrote it. And that is valuable.

So Will, next time you read this finished post, think about me, sitting in the corner of my mom’s living room, at the table you made into a gaming corner, having a kinda depressed day because I couldn’t get myself to do anything, until I starting looking through my folder of old “This Rocks” docs, and I was hit with a wave of inspiration to write this. Remember this feeling. Remember, things aren’t always as bad in your head as they are when you’re sad. Things get better. Just give it some time, and when you feel you can do something else, do it. It’s better to move on than wallow in the muck of a slow, disappointing day.

And to you, the reader that is not me, thanks for indulging me. I know this piece is really only for me. But if you learned something from this, or maybe had an issue with how I explained something, or thought about your own work or experience, or maybe you even enjoyed being in my head for a few moments as you read this, then you’ve engaged with these words, I’ve done my job, and art prevails once more.

Art is dead, long live art!

[plusorminuscongress]

New story in Politics from Time: The Mueller Report’s Key Lessons for the Press

Scattered across the 448-page report released by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller are noteworthy findings about the extent of the Russians’ machinations, the ploys they used to insinuate themselves into the voting structure of a battleground county, and the ways in which Kremlin-tied saboteurs interacted with reporters. These disclosures contain cautions. For the social media platforms: Imposters lurk in unexpected places. For our nation’s secretaries of state: The Russians made greater inroads into our voting systems than we thought. And for the press: Some of you were the object of special Kremlin attention. The relevant Mueller passages should be seen as both a forewarning and an invitation to action.

Contrary to presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner’s pooh-poohing of the Russian intervention as “a couple Facebook ads,” the Special Counsel’s report confirms that the Kremlin’s efforts were “sweeping and systematic.” This finding comports with the one I advanced in Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President – the Russian social media messages aligned with those of the Trump campaign, focused on constituencies crucial to a Republican victory, and were sufficiently widespread to make a difference. For Russia to help the Trump campaign, no coordination was necessary.

Importantly, the “sweeping and systematic” Russian sabotage involved the theft of “hundreds of thousands of documents” as well as infiltration of social media platforms from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to Reddit, Tumblr, and 9GAG. From cyberspace, Kremlin-tied players instigated rallies, sold merchandise, and even created a video game called Hilltendo. The lessons? In the run-up to the 2020 elections, campaign operatives should safeguard their digital musings and the social media platforms should look for interventions in any venue harboring an audience.

Like the story of the Russian social media manipulations, the extent of Russian intrusion in our electoral infrastructure went unrecognized for too long. Although in September 2017, 21 states were notified by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that the Russians had targeted their voting systems, not until April 2019 did the FBI and DHS report that there was related Russian research and reconnaissance in all 50 states. To that, the Mueller Report added a chronicle of Kremlin spearphishing of over 120 email accounts of Florida county election officials and of Russian insertion of “malicious software (commonly referred to as a Trojan) that permitted the GRU to access the infected computer.” To that tale of subversion, the Special Counsel then adds an ominous coda. The Russian saboteurs may have accessed the network of “at least one Florida county government.” Not only should any anomalies in registration or voting in that locale be scrutinized, but our news feeds should now be clogged with accounts of secretaries of state vigilantly hacker-proofing our elections. The lesson: forewarned is forearmed.

An additional take-away lurks nearby: appearance can have a reality of its own. The legitimacy of an election can be undercut without changing the outcome or mangling ballots. All that is needed is the assumption that a malign force may have done so. This dynamic comes alive in Mueller’s revelation that President-Elect Trump considered the intelligence community assessment about Russian interventions his “Achilles heel” insofar as “[E]ven if Russia had no impact on the election, people would think Russia helped him win, taking away from what he had accomplished.”

At the same time, for media outlets that have disregarded Matthew 7:5’s injunction to cast out the plank in their own eyes before focusing on the speck afflicting others, a cornea-stabbing sliver in the Special Counsel’s report indicates that Russian intelligence agents cloaked in their DCLeaks persona “gave certain reporters early access to archives of leaked files by sending them links and passwords to pages on the dcleaks.com website that had not yet become public.”

Those unnamed journalists might ask whether their hack-based stories withstand the test of time. Across the country, newsrooms should consider the possibility posited by the New York Times’ Amy Chozick that hurried and largely uncritical coverage of stolen Democratic missives may have made journalists, as Amy Chozick writes in Chasing Hillary, “puppets in Putin’s shadowy campaign.” There’s been little public evidence of the kinds of introspection that would suggest that, confronted with a similar situation in 2020, the press would respond differently.

If my argument in Cyberwar is correct, that debate matters. Evidence offered there suggests that the media’s use of the Russian-hacked private emails probably altered the electoral outcome by changing the news agenda during the Democratic convention, the weekend of the disclosure of the Access Hollywood tape, and the final four weeks of the campaign. In that closing month, coverage of the WikiLeak’d releases plausibly explains an October erosion in public confidence in Clinton’s qualification to be president.

The press, the platforms, and those safeguarding our electoral processes exist in a moment that may determine whether the words Winston Churchill spoke to the House of Commons in May 1935 will apply to them. “When the situation was manageable it was neglected,” he said, “and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure.”

By Kathleen Hall Jamieson on April 30, 2019 at 12:45PM

[tinymixtapes]

Music Review: Mac DeMarco - This Old Dog

Mac DeMarco This Old Dog [Captured Tracks; 2017] Rating: 2.5/5 Mac has been coasting by on his inimitable charm for a while now, and for whatever reason, it still works on me to some extent — the charm, that is. It might not be worth going into exactly why — speaking only for myself — I might still be fool enough to not find it wholly undermined by the majority display of nonspecificity on This Old Dog; it might even be worth wondering if those two factors aren’t in fact intrinsically related in the context of this album, as if its prevailing superficies of blandness is some kind of extended joke in keeping with Mac’s “fun-loving” persona, “goofy” as he is supposed to be. But whatever spiny issues surround questions of authenticity and personas — and clichés — there’s still something to be said in individual cases like this, even if the topic in general and as a whole is exhausted and some care has to be exercised in its invocation (and boy does it). Here it is relevant, not least because Mac himself makes it so whether he means to or not. But before we get too much further into that, it’s more useful, for now, to try to make a brief and provisional inventory of themes, sounds, etc.: A. The most prominent subject matter of this album is the at-the-time impending death of his mostly absent father (who has since recovered, a possibly awkward — or redemptive — fact that for us must remain external to the matter at hand), and the most noteworthy thing about this is the frank way Mac portrays his ambivalence about it. This encounter with filial confusion — and not various other forms of “introspection,” like the uncertainty of getting older, weary-before-his-time stuff that have already been a feature of his work (Salad Days’s title track, among many others) — is what’s thematically distinctive about This Old Dog. It might be too soon to say that Mac will never sing about cigarettes again or that the Mac of oozy pitched-down sleaze is gone forever, but they aren’t here at least. Time to purge those superfluous watery humors by the eyes instead. B. Despite having moments that tip it toward being his most “challenging” album lyrically (if being challenging has anything to do with being serious), This Old Dog might be his least interesting instrumentally and musically. Of course, attempting to assess Mac DeMarco albums according to a metric of comparative “challenging”ness is a basic category mistake, yet nevertheless…. he’s drifting — deliberately, or just by not keeping his eyes open — closer and closer to the so-called middle of the so-called road, a dangerous zone that not many can survive unscathed. What you’ll find here is a greater predominance of acoustic guitars compared to previous albums, even a harmonica, and there’s a real acoustic piano in the background on one song (the twangy, reverby electrics that used to be something of a personal signature are for the most part relegated to providing a little unobtrusive decoration). And yet, with the possible exception of the very, very brief “Sister,” one doesn’t have the impression that he’s using the opportunities that this kind of instrumentation supposedly offer the musician (greater intimacy, humanity, spontaneity, and all those terrible things). Mac still uses his synths from time to time too, but he doesn’t seem to have found any new settings for them. As a whole, then, it’s perfect for a “chill” BBQ or perhaps for blasting out into a deserted amphitheatre overgrown with weeds on a lazy summer’s day. But those are best-case scenarios: it’s just as easy to imagine that Mac is covering his own songs in some insipidly accessible pseudo-bossa nova style in preparation for pitching them to the particular kind of cafe that, in my neck of the woods at least, seems to think its customers won’t be too distracted by such things. This Old Dog by Mac DeMarco C. Mac’s aforementioned charm rides at least partly on not giving a shit, so it’s either unfair or a misunderstanding (of whatever it was that has been responsible for giving him any appeal) to expect ambition. Still, not demanding ambition doesn’t mean expecting slackness. When he sings “There’s a price tag hanging offa half of all that fun,” I can’t say what that price tag might be for the man himself, but whatever the other consequences might be, his musical mellowing out and “maturing” might be just one of them (a high price!). And this isn’t the only aspect of the album’s descent into the commonplace. When it comes to the lyrics, the lack of (evident) artifice, the almost willful blandness — or more charitably, generality — sometimes highlights the sentiment in question, at the same time precise but unspecific (hence, recognizable and generalizable). Sure, the most effective songs here aren’t the generic love songs, the songs posed so often as a kind of advice-delivery system to younger protégé/self, and sure, there are songs that make such flagrant use of clichés (I don’t ever want to hear about a wolf in sheep’s clothing again, in any context) that no amount of irony could plausibly count as a defense. But the album’s standout track “Moonlight on the River” has the effect it does precisely by evoking what could easily seem like platitudes (“everybody dies”) in a context that is utterly frank in its ambivalence (this is one of the songs mentioned above dealing with the possible death of his father), “I’d tell you that I loved you, if I did.” It isn’t harmed either by being the longest track on the record, featuring an extended coda of spacey arpeggios that don’t qualify as ambition per se, but do qualify as something I like. We’ve all heard someone fuck around with an echo pedal or other such device, but I’ll confess to still thinking it’s cool. I won’t try to convince you that it’s new though, because it isn’t. D. A song like “Moonlight on the River” makes it seem as if Mac is more able to be sincere in a song than when acting as himself in public. It’s interesting, then, to read in interviews that Mac says he has tried to minimize the gap between the “real” Mac and the public face. I’ve no doubt he means it, but it’s easy to point out that public persona is a concept more equivocal than that might imply — it sure ain’t the same stuff being expressed in songs as it is in the actions of the public Mac. And perhaps, then, overcome with an enthusiasm for distinctions, you might want to say that the private Mac is also twofold, that there’s a real private depth that can never be plumbed as well as the way he acts in the private sphere (never mind the philosophical and political status of either form of privacy). The temptation would then be to try to pin them all together like butterflies to a board, either the same one pin slid through them all to create a neat but uncomfortable overlap or arranged carefully side by side, the better to engage in precise comparisons, to catch out inconsistencies, to perform a peculiar taxonomical game. But we would no doubt find — for Mac as for everyone else — these distinctions too are in fact too few. “Often a heart tends to change its mind,” he sings on “This Old Dog,” — a little mind for every organ, what a multiplication of homunculi! Instead of looking for a locus of control in a persona — single, solid, and probably conscious — you might look for uncharacteristically vigorous agglomerations of tissue, with all their irregular and subverbal tendencies. But without getting carried away with too much digging around in those innards, there’s another twist in the tale: the very next line of the song in question seems to invoke some kind of diurnal agency instead: “A new day decides on a new design.” So on to the outer spheres, to the celestial movements that govern those of our globe we go, contemplation of which I’m sure you’ll agree is a loftier and more edifying business than the sordid character-based speculation you’ll find here. http://j.mp/2rBOkJC

[marginalgloss]

the belly of an architect

When The Beginner’s Guide was released in late 2015, there was a sense that the current lexicon of video game writing was somehow inadequate to properly describe it. Here was something that was entirely in keeping with every trend in indie games: it was personal, political, metafictional; it was witty and ironic, in the highest sense of those terms; it was a game about games, and it was a game about people. It was also funny, visually inventive, and above all it felt like something genuinely new. It was received with good reviews, tempered with caution. Even players who were affected by it seemed to hold it at arm’s length. Much like the sight of somebody having an emotional breakdown in public, the implication was that it was powered by something that was somehow beyond criticism.

The game had a certain amount in common with The Stanley Parable, the previous work by creator Davey Wreden. Both games are told from the first-person perspective with 3D graphics, and place a very limited range of interactions at the player’s disposal. There is not much to do in these games; you wander alone through a world while an unseen narrator comments on what you’re doing and what you are looking at. Indeed, The Beginner’s Guide is even more limited in this respect than The Stanley Parable — there are none of the alternative paths, hidden endings and secrets that many players found so endearing in the latter title. But both games are full of jokes about the absurdities of game design, and in spite of their sometimes acerbic tone, both are made with a rich empathy for players and designers alike.

Where things differ is in the uneasy relationship of The Beginner’s Guide to reality. It purports to be a set of unfinished games originally created by somebody called Coda. (This requires some suspension of disbelief: we know from the credits that a small team of other people worked on this game as well, but within the fiction of the game, they might as well not exist.) 

The story goes that Wreden has spliced fragments of Coda’s creations together into a semi-coherent experience in the hope of demonstrating the work of his talented friend. As the player moves through Coda’s worlds, Davey’s voice is their tour guide. His explanations provide a ‘story’ to what otherwise might seem a totally abstract set of design decisions. But Davey is more than a narrator: he’s the architect of the entire experience, warping the player from one section to the next, and often interfering directly with Coda’s work in order to make it possible to play.

This question of possibility is key to understanding The Beginner’s Guide. For Davey, everything in life seems possible, or can be made so; for Coda, it’s the opposite. Coda was, we are told, a socially awkward person. To borrow a phrase from Sarah Baume, he is ‘not the kind of person who is able to do things’. Yet Coda’s levels seem quite straightforward at first. He dabbles with a map for Counterstrike, and a science fiction thing that almost feels like the start of a ‘real’ game. But even in those early examples, his work demonstrates a tendency to add inexplicable elements which interrupt the experience entirely. 

A bizarre bug in the sci fi game means that if the player walks into a laser beam — which they have to do in the absence of other options, even though they know it’ll kill them — they actually end up floating slowly through the ceiling, and then up and out of the map, so that the whole of the crafted space is visible to them. Is this a sort of expressionism, or is it simply a mistake? Why would somebody put something like that in a game? What were they trying to tell us?

The basic situation between Davey and Coda is emblematic of a certain tension present in the way we think about games today. On one side, we have the idea of games as personal expression: the idea that in a game one might be able to turn one’s own experiences into a kind of machine for empathy. On the other, there’s the notion that games don’t need to be ‘about’ anything except their own mechanics: that they should be accessible and rewarding and coherent and, you know, fun. The Beginner’s Guide is an attempt to resolve this tension -- both within a creator’s work, and their life. Is it possible to make a game which is complete, rational and enjoyable, when none of those things are true of life?  

The personal approach is Coda’s modus operandi, but his games aren’t expressive in any kind of straightforward way. At times, they have all the cold unreality of conceptual art. And it’s hard to tell how they might be encountered in isolation, since as it stands, they can only be appreciated alongside the insight that Davey provides into their methodology. He’s like the curator of an exhibition who creates an experience by placing one work alongside another, by colouring the backdrop, by writing the cue cards. At every stage we are told what to think about we are seeing. And like any good critic, Davey isn’t hesitant to root around in the guts of Coda’s work if it means he can get his point across better.

(considerable spoilers to follow.)

Davey finds a lot of things to show that were never meant to be seen at all. A distinguishing feature of video games is that a great deal of extra craft can be present in the work itself, but also be totally invisible to the audience, even though it represents a deliberate artistic gesture. Imagine a writer who encoded whole extra passages in a novel by sealing them up within the endpapers: the equivalent of this comes early on in The Beginner’s Guide when Davey strips away the walls of an innocuous hallway to reveal a vast network of interconnected passages floating in the void; an entire hidden labyrinth, forever unreachable by the player.

This is emblematic of the eternal problem for Davey. Coda’s games were never intended to be ‘played’ in the commonly understood sense. Coda created a staircase that would slow the player’s movement speed in proportion to their progress along it, making it almost impossible to ever reach the top. He built a cell within a huge, elaborate prison, where the player had to spend hours and hours in real time before they would be allowed to proceed. In one of his more detailed creations, Coda made a little house in which the player can only repeat a cycle of tedious domestic chores while a nameless companion provides a stream of inanely optimistic chatter. Davey allows the player a taste of all these, but he cuts them short too. For him, the work cannot be allowed to speak for itself: context is king. And who else is there to provide context but Davey?

Over time, Davey begins to build up a portrait of Coda in the player’s mind. These are the creations of a person who is anxious and depressed. This is the work of someone who is subject to a kind of creative paralysis; a sense of crippling inertia which sees him repeating the same small, obsessive routines that have damaged his personal life. In Davey’s version of their relationship, Davey himself only exists as a helpful counterpoint. He tells the player how he encouraged Coda to share his work, and to make it more accessible to a wider audience by toning down some of the more difficult aspects. And eventually, Coda’s creations begin to take on a different shape. Davey is delighted to point out when a clearly defined end point appears in the levels, marked by an old-fashioned lamp post.

But at the same time, things seem to be progressing towards a very uncertain place. In this sense, the ending of The Beginner’s Guide has a certain shape to it reminiscent of Gone Home. Players approach both having worked through a great deal of dark subject matter, much of which suggests that something horrifying might be around the final corner. But instead, the game has one final curveball to throw.

The last world Coda shared with Davey was his most impressive, and his most demanding. An enormous tower that stretches upwards through endless dark space. To approach it, the player has to make it through a maze with invisible walls: touching any wall means death. And even if they manage to get through this, there’s a locked door where the switch is on the other side of the door — it’s simply impossible to open. (As ever, Davey is on hand to warp the player past both of these obstacles, if they choose.)

Once the player has passed through every one of Coda’s impossible challenges, they find a gallery, with a series of messages on the walls.

‘Would you stop taking my games and showing them to people against my wishes?’

‘Would you stop changing my games? Stop adding lamp posts to them?’

‘The fact that you think I am frustrated or broken says more about you than about me.’

This, then, is the real story of The Beginner’s Guide. It is a confession of sorts: Davey’s interference with Coda’s work has gone beyond packaging it in an accessible way. He’s adopted it entirely. And as Davey explains, in a rare moment of honesty, he’s come to directly identify with certain aspects of it. Coda’s worlds express something that Davey’s conventional persona cannot talk about. And Davey wanted to share them with the world because the ensuing admiration made him feel valued; but in doing so, he may have destroyed something essential about them.

Perhaps Coda wasn’t a depressed person after all. His messages to Davey seem to suggest as much; or as Davey puts it: ‘Maybe he just likes making prisons’. Depression and anxiety are not generally conducive to creativity, and Coda was nothing if not creative.

But we aren’t quite at the end of the game.

The final sequence is an epilogue. It’s the only part of the game which isn’t framed as Coda’s work. 

A train station leads to a windowless train carriage. The train leads to a station outside a stately home, the lofty rooms filled empty but for heaps of sand. More caves, more columns of dark and light. Then we are out into a little empty abstract space of bright yellows and blue skies, a visual tone not dissimilar to Coda’s first map for Counterstrike. And then down a little hole in the ground and we’re in that space ship again from the start of the game. Here again is that laser beam, so strangely broken; what do you think will happen if the player walks into it?

Davey is talking again, but this time from the heart. He’s no longer interpreting, nor commenting on the environment: he’s just telling us how he feels. It’s refreshing, and true. In this moment, what we have suspected all along comes to pass: Davey and Coda have become one and the same. 

It’s to the game’s credit that a player might feel uncomfortable at this stage, as though they had accidentally wandered into a personal conflict between two old friends. But nothing happens by accident here, no more than it does in any other video game. The question of whether or not Coda ought to be considered a ‘real person’, so often raised around the release of The Beginner’s Guide, is not without interest; but not for the reasons many people thought. In the reality of the game, Coda is no more or less fictional than Davey Wreden.

The world was always Davey’s, in every sense. Perhaps Coda was only ever a part of him: one that he originally believed he could hold at an arm’s length, but which he eventually comes to embrace. By the time we reach the end, he’s absorbed Coda’s lessons and moved beyond them. He knows that the home is a prison, and that the prison is the maze, and that the maze is a the world. He’s realised that it might be possible to create a thing which is both an entertaining experience and a valid means of personal expression, without necessarily telling the player how to feel about it at every juncture. In other words, he’s ready to create something that looks a lot like The Beginner’s Guide.

[ryukodragon]

This answer is rather lengthy, and FULL of detailed spoilers for The Beginner’s Guide, so be warned!  There will be dialogue quotes that GIVE AWAY THE FINAL TWIST!

Of course, you are free to do as you please!  This IS a discussion prompted by an earlier post I made, and I still encourage everyone to play the game themselves to get the full experience!

That said, let’s dive in...

From @1upmushrooms:

Please don't take this to be antagonistic towards anyone but what's the connection between "using an author's characters in a way they never want them to be used" and the Beginner's Guide? That game was a cautionary tale about over-analyzing entertainment, finding interpretations and meanings in media that had none, and was more about people twisting facts to suit theories instead of vice versa. Also, what you said in your post is not really comparable to B.G

Davey didn't just produce a series that looked into Coda's games with a meaning that Coda never intended. He deliberately showed people things that were not meant to be shown by any means and to add insult to injury, he showed people a tampered version of the very things that weren't meant to be released to validate his theory while passing the fake off as Coda's original work. That is VERY different than "using authors character in a way they didn't want them to be used"

I might not be getting something (which, considering what's being discussed is both deliciously ironic and very worrying to me) so if I got something messed up, don't hesitate to correct me.

First of all, I really appreciate you messaging me about this!  It’s good to discuss these things, especially when it comes to interpreting such reasonably abstract games as The Beginner’s Guide.

I believe there is truth in what you understand about the game! People often twist intended messages behind stories and games to suit their own interpretations.

Even so, I think this game goes much deeper than that.  It’s very personal on a couple of fronts.

First, the way Davey changed the games. Take the “Stairs” game, for instance.  Davey says at the end, “Coda would often tell me that he didn't mind if people thought of him as cold or distant, he said that he knew he was actually a vibrant and compassionate person, but that it takes time to really see that. It can be a very slow climb to get there. “

Exactly - it takes TIME to get so close to someone.  You can’t just change the rules and hit a button so that you get to know that person faster - and ironically, that’s what Davey did.  Not only did he force his way into Coda’s games, it’s implied that by doing so, he was forcing his way into Coda’s life.

And I agree with you, Davey showed games that the creator never intended to be seen, changing and twisting them to suit Davey’s own interpretations, adding lampposts, forcing an endlessly looping game to end, and hammering his own meaning into each game.  In that sense, there’s no way to tell how much of the original games remain that WE get to see!

But - is that really so different from using a creator’s CHARACTER in a way that they no longer wanted them to be used?  I don’t think so.

My friend’s character was initially created for one purpose, yes.  But then, unwanted attention arrived, accusing my friend of “having serious issues”, twisting my friend’s interpretations and intentions to suit their own wants and needs, and in the end, they were demanding more from a Machine that became too run down.

And in the end, Davey admits the reason he continued to show Coda’s games against Coda’s wishes.

“... when I took your work and I was showing it to people, it actually felt... it felt as though I were responsible for something important and valuable.  And the people who played them, they treated me like I was important! They really listened and cared about what I had to say.  Even though I was showing your work, it was... I felt good about myself.  Finally.”

However, it’s exactly as you said - Davey was NOT showing Coda’s work.  He took Coda’s games, against Coda’s wishes, added lampposts and changed mechanics, and showed the world a lie.

In the same manner, my friend took their character back, after the lies and misunderstandings compounded on top of one another, causing others to believe that something was seriously wrong with the creator.

“The fact that you think I’m broken say more about you than about me.“

My friend gave their character a new persona and a new role, and hoped that everyone would accept him as the TRUE character.

Unfortunately, not everyone did.  They continued to perpetuate the old persona, against his creator’s wishes, which helped feed the misconceptions about my friend.  And honestly, there’s every chance that people STILL show him this way, because of the sense of validation and popularity still surrounding that old persona - a popularity that they did not earn themselves.

“More.  More more more.  More love, more praise, more people telling me that I’m good, always more more more.  It’s like a disease.”

My friend is fine.  But like Coda, they’re not coming back, because of the Daveys that ran them ragged and poisoned an environment that, once upon a time, gave them so much joy.

Now, that all said, The Beginner’s Guide is open to interpretation on purpose.  It’s the reason people need to play it for themselves, so that they can draw their own conclusions, like you did.  These are the conclusions I drew, based on the experiences that my friend went through.  Maybe others out there will see something else.

At its core, however, I think there’s something very important to understand about creators as a whole.

When a creator doesn’t want certain work to be shared - drawings, photos, videos, whatever - that decision should be respected.  Those who willfully choose to ignore such decisions are selfish, and it’s important for them to realize that.  Sometimes these works are deeply personal to the creator, like entries in a locked diary.

Please respect creators.  You won’t unlock their secrets by forcing your way into their lives and picking their personal works apart.  We are much more complicated than that.