#the question is: are all these connections intentional? were matt and the crew actively trying to tie things this deep? we may never know

[sasoxichomoshi]

are the pathless and abzu related? yes, and this connection is way more important than people give credit for (i will be rambling now)

visual cues are everywhere; the beheaded shark statue right at the start of the game, the purification process and the spirit realm architecture all nods to the previous game as the shells and the locked door at cerno's domain are literal imports from abzu, which are all sweet references present in the pathless

everything that concerns the spiritual realm has a touch of abzu (pantone abzu blue when)

i'd also add that i have autistic urges to just write about how the pathless feels like this result from accumulated knowledge/experience from past Nava games - the pathless has both the 'myth of creation' and the journey of the hero combined in order to tell this lil story with these silly characters (i see it all as if giant squid team woke up one day and said "what if we made like a fancy fanfic yknow" really best decision ever), however knowing myself it''d just feel like nonsense rambling (even worse than this) and a bit off topic, but i had to mention or my skin wouldn't stop itching

anyway back to the two games -

i have this recurring impression that abzu allegories and symbolism are woven in the fabric of reality in the pathless - it's not about them directly, but are foundational for whatever is being told here and now

you cannot, in full consciousness, tell me that these are just easter eggs in the pathless that giant squid introduced because it's a past title from the studio; not when there was giant effort in blending the two games sensibly - abzu is brought up in the symbolism, the color palette (red/blue), in the environment, and it's even present in the soundtrack

in short, tying the universe of the two games together was intentional

but despite visually tied, it still made no sense to me; ok we share the color palette, we wander around with the help of a tall one, we defeat the bad one, what else there's to it? is it just the start of the giant squid MCU? giant squid cinematic universe? or gaming universe? (i feel stupid)

regardless, as i answered the question to how, i wanted to understand why - and to make sense out of it all, i resorted to a feature unique to the pathless: written text

what is so important to tell the player that you need written text, something you were avoiding in all your past games but that suddenly you bring back out of nowhere to tell a story in a way you havent done before? i can just assume some topics were too necessary to just left it implied (at best), or never explained (at worst)

one of the reasons i have written this blog post until this point (the main reason, actually) is that i feel there's a bit of an overlook of an essential part in the established the pathless n abzu crossover (can i call it that?), something that permeates everything, but it's not really visible in a literal way

--

as i played the game, godslayer perspective and motives stood out - they are the focus of a good part of all the tablets and dead people's memories - and as i dived deeper into the abzu connections (pun not intended) certain lines got too remarkable:

so,,, godslayer deems this world broken because it's made out of pure chaos, ok i guess it makes sense uhhh wait wait im having flashbacks i have seen this befo-

uhh oooooohhh ok ok get it i can see some parallels ughhh woooow just wow omg

the underlying factor here is that chaos is origin, foundation for both games universes (tho we can all see that at this point it's the same universe)

in abzu, by ordaining chaos the diver brings back life; in the pathless the ordained chaos, the one that constitutes all life, is at risk because someone decided that having everything made out of (essentially) chaos wasnt really suitable for the second industrial revolution i guess

note: if you know nothing about abzu i recommend reading this post cause it explains a bit about what chaos means in abzu, hence it's relevant to the pathless too

and understanding the chaos that impregnates existence as a whole is central in the pathless, which brings us to another focal point the game brings up: religion

you see religion a big deal in the pathless in the sense that it defines factions; you pick a side, and it's what drives the line of action of almost everyone in the island - the pathfinder quest against the tall ones, the godslayer followers vs the tall ones followers, entire communities dedicated to their local gods, and so on

superficially, it's easier to go to the "bad vs good" route where godslayer must be defeated to keep the order and the light and tall ones good guys whatever, the problem of this line of thought is: too much black and white and no gray to be seen

the pathless final message speaks about decision making: you are free to trace your own path (and this message is reinforced through game design and the title and at the final boss fight, you can name it) however, here lies the detail: similar to the chaos surrounding us, it goes unnoticed that the will to take a determined path comes from within

that's why religion is a hot topic in the pathless, it's what allows people to trace a path in a chaotic world, literally

the myth of creation - the eagle mother, the branch, her children - in itself is a form of understanding reality, religion - prayers, sacrifices, lines of conduct, contemplation - is also a form of grasping the real, and from this understanding, this particular view of the world, you are invited to take action; you cultivate the land and you build temples dedicated to your god

you take action based in what you believe, and you can see it better in the dead followers you can commune with through the island, they are fierce in their beliefs, which leads them to make a stand or fight back

it also stands out how the tall ones are imbued with negative traits; nimue shifts moods like summer rain, kumo is terribly jealous and childish, sauro despite everything will resort to violence, cernos is too shy, heck even eagle mother as gentle as she is let atrocities took place before any meaningful action was considered

all the tall ones have their virtues and imperfections because in the end they are also made out of chaos, essentially they are not that different from any tree on the plateaus; but, as the tablets about the masks state, they see things beyond this realm, and with this knowledge they try to guide those that dont see it - it's like this for their followers, and hunter is also guided by them

godslayer is no different, he took a path lead by his beliefs, beliefs those that reject the idea of having life from chaos, which lead to his obsession of fixing what he deemed broken; from his perspective, he suffered in the hands of the tall ones and their followers which made him believe that anything of their nature was treacherous - he failed tho, failed to understand that a single path would lead to perpetual suffering (as some memories states, "i was not meant to bloodshed"), which was a fate his followers had bittersweetly tasted

in this scenario, hunter is special: she's an outsider, she doesn't comprehend her mission just yet neither knows those lands; she's facing chaos in its pure form and in order to make sense of her new reality, she takes the eagle mothers advices; upon taking on the trials of the island she witnessed chaos in its many forms, and she assimilates it, not good nor bad but a 'in between' - that's why (from my understanding), on purifying the godslayer final form, her eyes glow in bright blue not because she's some 'declared since birth' allied of the tall ones, but because it signals purpose, she understands the chaos, the one that causes life and death, and she embraces that view from within and translates it into strength to fight back and endure

there's not a single creature in this world that doesnt feel lost and be it whatever creature - human, tall ones, demons, animals, everyone is trying to make sense of this confusing world we live in, be it through any path at hand - and religion is just one of the possible ways in the sea of infinite available paths

as hunter explores deeper into the island, she bonds with the tall ones but make no mistake, she's not really a faithful follower - and she doesn't need to be - cause she has the understanding that the tall ones represent this organized chaos necessary to the flux of life, she respects them

pathfinder, unfairly treated, will look at the tall ones and see just lies, refusing their guidance, he will strive for a new path not taken before and ignore any previous knowledge about the world, he will build up a single vision for a brand new reality absent of chaos because that's how he was conditioned to see and absorb the world around him

(and that makes godslayer feels even more tragic, having the possibility of seeing the world through new lenses by wearing the mask of the ancients yet he persisted in his views and ignored the reality as it was - chaos neatly woven - perhaps out of hate and sorrow for all past injustices; even in the end he resisted to accept the world that nurtured him, as he too was made out of chaos - and for that he's forgiven)

you and i can both worship sauro, but in the end we will look at the surrounding chaos from different perspectives and i will decide that pottery is the way to go while you see the sword as the suitable option; as the truth stands, this is a pathless land - there's no defined answer

the pathless, beyond the 'pathless land' lesson, has something more to tell - that perhaps the path is already established and to you is given the choice of going forward that path or re-evaluate and change directions;

if i had to define the pathless i'd say it's about what touches the eye and where you rest you hand (which can also explains why the eye is an ever present image throughout the game); through perception you grasp the world around you, you create your views and based on it you take action - will you release the bow string? will you strike with your sword? will you cultivate the land? or will you shed blood? what have you seen that made you act like this?

what a chaotic world

anyway, i have too much to say and no one to listen so my only options are write Big Blog Post or bang my head against the wall if you read until here (complete madness) thanks for enduring until the end

(cant wait to see the pathless references in sword of the sea i have faith)

[thefanficmonster]

Kick Some Ghost Ass

”Until Dawn Gang x Reader (Gender Neutral)

Warnings: Swearing, Sex jokes (excuse my bad humor)

Genre: CRACK, Humor

Summary: It’s one thing when trouble finds this gang, but why don’t we take a look at what happens when they go actively looking for trouble. Needless to say, chaos ensues and no one is spared. Some are more affected than others, and some are dead-ass traumatized, but isn’t that just how life is in general?

Requested by my dearest ever - Until Dawn Anon. Hi lovely! I’ve missed writing your requests and I’m really happy to be back, creating another chaotic fic! I’m sorry it has taken me so long to post it but here it finally is - crazy as ever! I hope you enjoy it! Love you to Blackwood Pines and back baby ❤❤❤

I don’t know how I’ve found myself in this situation but I’m not complaining. If I get to do dumb crazy shenanigans with my crew, I’m ready for just about anything. Not to mention I’m no stranger to ghost hunting. I’m that kid that made DIY Ouija boards and took them to cemeteries with their terrified friends. You should’ve seen us leaving after capturing no ghostly activity - my friends relieved as fuck, and me pissed as fuck.

But today, I’m not expecting nor will I be accepting any disappointment. Especially not with Jess swearing on her Chanel purse that she wasn’t making things up when she said she had a haunted house she wanted us to visit. I must say, I appreciate this group’s enthusiasm when it comes to the paranormal. Never have I had someone who catches my vibe on the subject so well, let alone an entire gang all sharing the same opinion as me - that ghosts, demons and poltergeists are so fucking cool. Sure, Emily took a bit of convincing and Jess is not one to give a shit about the other world creatures invisible to the human eye, but something allegedly happened that changed her mind.

Her a-hundred-and-something-year-old great-grandmother passed away recently and though the death itself didn’t shake Jess up as much as it probably should’ve, the events that followed led to this moment right now - the eleven of us pooling out of two minivans that have pulled up to a terrifying looking house in a wooded are of the suburbs. Jess literally gathered us all on an ‘emergency meeting’ in the courtyard of our college just so she could explain the situation in detail - she doesn’t do well with explaining things in general, let alone when she’s hysterical - so we only understood what she was trying to say when she mentioned the word ‘ghost’. That’s when we all started listening more closely, with the exception of Emily, Beth and Sam but the latter two were intrigued despite trying yo hide it. You can only imagine how excited Josh, Chris and I were, Mike and Matt following a close second behind. Ash was a tiny bit more hesitant but Chris convinced her to give in. And just like that, a week later, here we are.

“I gotta ask, did your great-gran own a VHS player? Or a chest in the attic? Bonus points if there’s a creepy, child-sized doll in there.“ Josh asks as he yanks all the equipment he insisted we bring out of the trunk of the minivan.

“Quit fucking around, Josh! This is serious!“ Jess complains from the spot she’s standing in, shivering in the cold autumn breeze.

“Yeah, Josh! VHS players, creepy dolls, that’s all child’s play.“ I scold him as I pull on my jacket, wrapping it around me more tightly, “Shit gets serious when there’s a secret basement.“

“Y/N!“ Jess shrieks in exasperation. Honesty, how am I supposed to NOT bother her when doing the opposite is so much easier and brings more amusement? “You’re not helping!“

“Wasn’t trying to.“ I wink at her, driving her into a new level of fury that almost leads her to chuck her phone at me. If it weren’t such a prized possession of hers, I’m pretty sure she would’ve chucked it with the intention of knocking me dead. I’m lucky she has the aim of a drunk toddler that spun around fifteen times.

“Hey, quit pissing my girlfriend off, will ya?!“ Mike, who is basically halfway inside the trunk of the other van calls out to us.

I roll my eyes but choose to let it slide. However, someone else doesn’t. Emily does a dramatic turn on her heel, turning to face Mike, or at least the only part of him which is visible. You can imagine how hard it is arguing with an ass like THAT. I don’t know how Emily does it but oh well, I guess I do it too, in a way.

“So it’s girlfriend now, huh? No space between the words?“ Oh that smile she’s flashing him, it could make the Devil himself shiver. I find it kinda hot though - it means shit’s about to go down or hit the fan, either way, the rest of us will be entertained.

Mikey boy straightens up, gracing the rest of us by-standers with his dazzling features. Nah, I’m capping. I honestly think Mike is as attractive as I am patient - very little, almost not at all. It’s surprising how him and Jess are now apparently together since I always pegged her to be the superficial type.

“Got a problem with that, Em?“ He asks, eyebrow raising, head tilting to the side. Oh yeah, it’s on now. But, as someone who’s been quite excited to do some ghost hunting, and also as a representative of the peanut gallery formed of the rest of us who find it amusing and annoying, I feel the need to cut it short before it goes where it shouldn’t. I came to see some exorcist shit, not Keeping Up With The Bitter Exs.

“Jess, I sure hope your grandma is a blood-thirsty ghost cause I can think of at least two people I’d serve to her on a silver platter.“ I snatch the keys the blond has been jingling nervously between her fingers and jog up the stairs to the front door.

Ok I maybe overexaggerated the eeriness of the house. It sure wouldn’t sit right with you if you saw it around sunset or at night, especially not if it’s foggy, but a horror movie house it is most certainly isn’t. It’s pristine and well kept, not a single crack in the walls, the only reason it’s unsettling is because: 1) We’ve all seen a few too many horror movies; 2) There’s been reports of ‘ghostly activity’ - as far as Jess is to be trusted.

While I’m surfing through all the keys, checking each and every single one of them on the door because the real key is unmarked, I can’t help but overhear the conversation going on behind me on the porch.

“Can you believe we got all this in a single day and for a discount on top of all?! Whoever says Craigslist sucks isn’t doing it right.“ Chris’ enthusiasm over the deal him and Josh got on the ghost hunting equipment has been what’s keeping a wide grin on his face this whole time. Though I’m proud of my boys for not getting murdered by the Craigslist seller, I must say I hate that I lost the bet we had - I had to pay them each ten bucks if they didn’t get scammed/kidnapped/murdered and I’m now twenty bucks poorer. I’m not saying I value those twenty bucks more than my friends, though my broke ass needs all the bucks it has and all the dollar bills it could get, but Lord knows I hate losing.

“Yeah, and the guy was only mildly sketchy.“ Josh adds just as excitedly and proudly, “To be honest, Cochise and I were probably the scary looking ones in that parking lot.“

A look over my shoulder shows the twins, Sam, Matt and Ash giving the duo skeptical and somewhat disappointing looks and shakes of their heads. I’ll admit, the equipment is in very good condition and it’s the complete set for ghost-hunting, according to BuzzFeed at least. I’m impressed with the purchase - probably had something to do with how scary Chris and Josh actually look. The all-nighters we’ve all been pulling lately have taken a toll on them worst with the dark circles and bags under their hollow eyes, pale faces and brains turned to mush. I know I’d give them a discount to avoid them pulling out meat cleavers on me.

“That’s all fine and dandy guys, but do you know how to work any of this?“ Sam asks, hesitantly lifting the EMF reader and turning it in her hand, analyzing it with a curious gaze. 

Josh and Chris exchange a look before the former replies, “Just the cameras and voice recorder, the rest falls on them.” He points a finger at me and laughs, “Though they aren’t able to work something as simple as keys, they are more than qualified to be a ghostbuster.”

“You know, Josh, jokes on you, I can work keys! Jess, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be able to work well with organizing things, hence my problem with these keys.“ I hurl the bunch of keys connected my a scarlet keychain at Josh, “Lemme demonstrate my true skills.“ I hop down the flight of stone stairs and approach the pile of equipment the guys have created smack-dab in the middle of the house’s driveway. 

“Oh, I gotta see this!” Mr. Ex-Class-President all but runs over, frowning when we all turn to look at him just as I pick up the spirit box to show off how it works, “Oh that’s what you meant. So you aren’t taking your clothes off?“

Jess and I are alike in one thing - the need we feel to chuck objects at people who piss us off. “You’re girlfriend is, like, right behind you, Munroe. Have some decency!”

“I was gonna enjoy a show as well, but I’m guessing we won’t be getting one.“ The girlfriend in question replies, looking at me quizzically as though that’s gonna convince me into discarding my outfit.

“No, unless you’re a ghost.“ I point the device I’m holding at Mike, “But if your boyfriend here keeps acting up I might turn him into one.“

“That sounds kinda kinky.“ Beth’s comment surprises me. The wink she sends me even more so. “And I kinda like it.“

Ok, ok, ok, hold on. 

Flirting with Munroe is one thing, but Beth is a completely different story. I can be threatening Mike with a knife one moment and cracking sex jokes with him over cold beer the next. While Beth actually has the ability to get me flustered and blushing, and my close relationship with her brother doesn’t help. Mother fucker can just whack me upside the head every time he catches me fussing over my silly crush on his sister.

“Ew, you too! Keep it in your pants or at least get a room.“ Emily doesn’t miss a beat when it comes to being herself. She’s truly a garbage bin full of treasure.

“We’d do the latter if SOMEONE could get the door open.” I glare daggers at Josh who is making hopeless attempts at what I was doing earlier - unlocking that damn door.

“I’d be more than happy to come through for you ladies.“ Mike says, getting in a stance of a runner before a race, his body directly opposite the door.

Oh I can’t wait to see where this is going. I SHOULD RECORD IT.

“Mike, it’s still breaking and entering and it’s still against the law even if the person’s dead.“ Sam points out, entering her mother-like mode, ruining the fun and causing me to pout at her. She gives me a look of disappointment - one worse than I’ve ever seen on my parents - so I just shut my trap before she can also express said disappointment through words and have me feeling guilty for the rest of the day.

A loud crash suddenly echoes causing us to turn our heads to look for the source of the terrifyingly startling sound. One glance is all it takes to put our minds at ease and a second one is enough to provoke different reactions in all of us - the broken window telling the story of where Josh has disappeared.

“What did I just say about breaking and entering?!“ Sam shouts after him while the vast majority of us are cracking up like hyaenas. Jess is just gaping at the broken window next to the front door in disbelief. She obviously can’t decide whether to join in on the fun or serve as back-up to Sam. Josh did technically damage private property that’s partially hers, but if you ask me it serves her right for not marking her keys.

“Sorry, I was too busy breaking the window to hear that part of the conversation!“ Josh’s apologetic smile appears on the other side of glassless frame. I can’t tell if he’s genuinely sorry or holding back laughter but either way, he looks innocent enough for Sam to let him off the hook as long as he doesn’t cause any more trouble - in which case: tough luck. Chris, Josh and I are nothing if not troublemakers, especially when we’re together. Chris tones it down when Ash’s around, and the same goes for Josh with Sam while I’m simply problematic regardless of who’s watching. My chaos is untamable, it’s a blessing and a curse and I love it, even though it’s landed me in hot water more than once. It’s nice to be around people on the same wavelength - chaos resides within this group and not a single one of us can hide it.

“At least we have a way in now.“ Ash offers Josh a helping hand in this argument after she recovers from the overwhelming fit of laughter. “I hope the broken window doesn’t anger your gran, Jess.“

The blond snaps out of her trance briefly, “No, she was a very sweet lady, but damn is Josh creative!” She hurries to correct herself, “Destructively creative.”

I hurry to correct her once again, “Chaotically creative.”

“Guys, do you mind coming in? It’s very creepy standing here alone!“ Josh calls out to us, looking over his shoulder at the interior of the house, “I’m expecting to be snatched and dragged to that secret basement we mentioned.“

“Mention it one more time and I swear to God-!“ Jess screams, fists tightened.

Before her angry wrath could crash atop us, we all make our way into the house through the broken window, carefully avoiding the shards of glass strewn about. One step inside and we’re met with the upmost of horror clichés - a drop in temperature. We’re all wearing thick hoodies because the weather outside is chilly in and of itself, but said hoodies aren’t as efficient at holding the house’s cold at bay and away from out skin.

Chris and Matt make their way in last, carrying the equipment consisting of three cameras, flashlights for everyone, an EMF reader, a spirit voice box, a voice recorder and a motion detector. I help them hand a light to each group member as well as a ghost-hunting device before we venture onward.

“If I were your grandma’s ghost, I’d be ten times more pissed about that window. It looks to me like that lady payed a lot of attention to keeping things in order.“ Matt comments while he examines the expensive looking painting hanging in the hallway.

I hear Emily scoff, “Unlike some.” but the remark is said so quickly and quietly I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who heard it.

Jess laughs, “She did like things in order, but she was never as strict as you might think. As I said, she was very sweet.“

“So do you just not take after her at all or were you adopted?“ Emily’s remarks are no longer a mumbled jumble of words, “No, nevermind, of course you’re not adopted. Your parents are smart people, they wouldn’t have chosen you if they had the chance.“

Jess laughs again, much more menacingly this time, causing me to exchange a look with Hannah who’s walking beside me. “Twenty bucks says one of them isn’t making it out of here.” It’s just a matter of time, to be honest. If not the lodge, or any party we’ve ever attended as a group, this haunted house is the perfect opportunity for a murder. We could even argue it was a ghost.

Luckily, the two cats clawing at each other’s throats don’t overhear, “No, my parents aren’t stupid, but your boyfriend clearly is. He chooses to date you! Or are you holding him captive or something.“

Ok that’s enough. I can tolerate a lot of things, but people calling one of my best friends stupid is not something I’m about to put up with, “How dare you call one of my hoes stupid?” I sneer at Jess, eyes narrowing.

“I thought I was your hoe too!“ She fights back, looking almost offended.

“Even more reason you shouldn’t have called him that! I don’t tolerate my hoes not respecting each other.“ 

I don’t get to see where this argument goes because Ashley’s shriek echoes throughout the hallway, stealing mine as well as the attention of everyone else. 

“There’s a ghost in here!“ Making it to the doorway of the room she’s in first, I peak my head inside and see the EMF reader she’s holding going nuts as if it’s detected something.

“Don’t worry, Ash, there’s a dead cactus here. That’s not the ghost we’re looking for, is it?“ Chris, my amazingly bright friend says, quirking an eyebrow suggesting that remark was nothing short of dead-ass serious.

“Chris, darling, that’s not how it works. Cactuses are plants.“ I point out as sweetly as I can as to mask my laughter.

“Don’t the same ghostly rules apply?“ The genuine look of confusion he gives me almost makes me lose it.

“Ok children, leave the room, we need to set up a motion detector to be sure.“ Beth says with a tone that suggests she’s more than over our insanity. Jeez, count on her and Sam to start parenting us through our chaos. They are of high authority, must admit - one genuinely feels bad if they don’t comply to whatever these two girls demand.

We all pile out in the hallway while the twins set up this interesting motion detector with green dots. I don’t know what Jess’ granny looked like, but I bet that even the most unattractive of people would look hella good with this lighting. Thankfully the room is dark enough with the shutters closed and the curtains drawn, allowing the dots to be perfectly visible.

We stare at the minimalistic room littered with fluorescent green dots on every surface for maybe a minute or two but not much happens to the disappointment to some and relief to others. However, as if not wanting to let us down, the ghost makes a shy appearance if the shift of the green dots is anything to go by.

“Oh shit, is that a ghost?“ Chris whispers, sounding as amazed as I feel in this moment.

“It better be.“ I mutter in response, refusing to blink and risk missing anything important.

The sudden presence of the obnoxious noise of the spirit voice box makes us all jump. As I turn my head to glare at whoever’s using it, Josh speaks up. “Are you an attractive ghost?”

“Josh, that’s my great-grandmother, you ass!“ Jess barks with disgust in her voice.

In the meantime, I catch glimpse of Mike rolling up his sleeves. Oh shit, this ain’t good.

“I’ve been waiting for this!“ He shouts victoriously, cracking his knuckles.

Knowing this won’t end well, the first thing I do is snatch the camera from Chris’ hands and turn it on.

“Um, Mike, what do you mean?“ Sam’s back to being concerned, turning to the rest of us when Mike doesn’t give her a response, “What’s he gonna do?“

“Fight it.“ I answer as though it’s the most normal thing to ever have been done, “Or, ash he calls it - kick some ghost ass.“

“A freaking ghost?! He’s gonna try to tussle with something he can’t see?“ I can’t tell if Matt’s tone is disbelief, amusement or disappointment, but I believe he isn’t about to try and stop or dear ex-president in his pursuit and that’s all that matters. I ain’t about to let someone stop whatever’s about to go down from going down.

“That’s still my great-grandmother, you dumbass!“ Jess shrieks with something alike terror.

“Don’t worry Jess, I’m sure she’ll go easy on him.“ I say in an attempt to reassure her but I can’t even be bothered really, I’m too laser-focused on the circus that’s about to take place in front of me.

Mike, as if encouraged by my words, charges into the room. Much to his dismay, before he could even reach the ghost, he’s met with a much more vigorous enemy - the carpet. The rascal trips him up and Mr. Munroe falls flat on his face.

The group stays silent, looking at the glorious aftermath of the glorious fall. Told ya these lights could make everything fabulous. Must say, it’s truly an honor for me to have been able to catch all that on tape.

“10/10, would ghost-hunt with Mikey Munroe again.“

[hellzyeahwebwielingessays]

The Not-So-Amazing Mary Jane Part 25: AMJ #2.1

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Master Post

Just like the first issue, I’m going to go through the issue page by page.

Believe it or not. the problems literally start on the recap page.

For starters check out this line:

....and staffed with outsiders (like MJ) whenever possible...

This is incredibly odd as it seemingly contradicts what issue #1 established.

I say seemingly because it depends upon how you define ‘outsiders’. Outside of what exactly?

The Hollywood system?

Traditional film or TV circles?

By those metrics the inclusion of so many criminals and former felons could fit the bill.

However, the recap lists Mary Jane as an example of such ‘outsiders’, which muddies the waters.

I suppose from a certain point of view she might be called an outsider but in context it doesn’t seem an appropriate descriptor at all.

Mary Jane has  acting credits. She’s worked on Hollywood films before. She’s worked in TV before. She’s worked on stage before.

Alright, she’s not exactly Scarlett Johansson, but she’s not really an outsider.

More poignantly, the recap seems to be implying that MJ was included specifically because of her alleged outsider status. Putting aside how MJ isn’t really an outsider, this just doesn’t add up.

As detailed in parts 5-6, we the audience know  that MJ’s inclusion is either due to:

Mysterio knowing about her connection to Spidey or

Kindred ordered Beck to include her.

The latter is the more likely answer. But even if it wasn’t the implication here is that Mysterio always wanted Mary Jane in his movie.

This is imbecilic of him because he is aware of her connection to Spider-Man!

Beck could be viewed as an obsessive and an egomaniac, but he’s not an idiot. If anything he is dangerously cunning. If he really just wanted an outsider actress with talent he’d have endless options other than Mary Jane to pick from.

Regardless of your feelings on the matter, the reality within Hollywood is that actors are a dime a dozen.

If Beck knows who Spidey is and therefore knows about MJ’s connection to him, he must have a specific reason  for hiring her. He must have a particular need to keep her on set as he practically begged her to do in issue #1; a fact acknowledged in the recap itself. In fact in ASM v5 #25 Beck personally sought out Mary Jane’s former  agent in order to get her into the movie. He didn’t look at a pool of actors and cast someone. He was incredibly specific.

Based upon the information we’ve been given, MJ’s connection to Spidey is the only explanation for all this. So what the Hell is this nonsense about her being an outsider? If he wanted an outsider why did he personally seek out  Mary Jane?

I’m sorry, I can’t give the benefit of the doubt on this front. This is a clear cut example of incompetence. Either Williams and/or her editors weren’t paying attention to prior stories (including the first issue!) or they were and didn’t care.

Regardless it’s bad.

Moving on, we then have Cage McKnight referred to as a “superstar director”.

Wasn’t Cage supposed to be an indie director? Call me nuts but a ‘superstar director’ is surely someone like Spielberg or Ryan Coogler. An indie director is by definition not a superstar. It also further contradicts ASM v5 #29’s claims about McKnight harder to reconcile. In that issue McKnight was supposed to be a new and fairly unknown director.

But I’ll let all that pass because he could be a super star on the indie scene.

Additionally, the recap in general fails to acknowledge the presence of criminals on set. They are simply referred to as outsiders and people who were on their ‘last hope of making something meaningful’. This totally obscures the reality of the situation and paints it as a lot less dangerous or irresponsible.

We then come to the most damning line in the entire recap.

MJ agreed to keep Quentin’s secret—even from Peter/Spider-Man.

That literally never happened in issue #1.

There was never a moment MJ agreed  to keep Mysterio’s secret from Peter. Sure, we never saw her tell him the truth. But the story never highlighted the fact she was knowingly withholding information from him. She was incredibly casual about the film project and showed no signs of apprehension about lying to her partner.

It’s not even that Williams was being incredibly subtle. The first issue simply failed to ever acknowledge the fact that MJ was lying to Peter; she just did it!

More significantly the implication is that MJ is keeping this secret from Peter specifically because she’s sympathetic to Mysterio and his crew’s desire to make something meaningful. So I guess Williams is maintaining the mischaracterization from last issue huh? See prior instalments for why lying to Peter, sympathising with Beck and trusting him is OOC for Mary Jane.

Honestly, how would Matt Murdock feel about MJ letting Mysterio tell his magnum opus before he dies? The last time he was dying and decided he needed a magnum opus his girlfriend died!

Surely Karen or Gwyneth or any of the other innocent people Beck killed wanted the chance to do something meaningful with their lives too?

Why should Beck be afforded such an opportunity when he denied similar chances to people far more deserving?

Now granted this is just the recap page but the importance of a recap page is not to be underestimated.

Every comic is someone’s first, Stan Lee himself said that.

Recap pages are important as they give new readers the opportunity to jump on ship and thereby hopefully buoy up the sales as they naturally decline from issue #1 onwards.

Speaking from experience here, growing up my UK Marvel reprints had fairly detailed recap pages that provided enough context for me to pick up basically any issue and generally understand what was going on.

Having the recap contradict the actual story is misinforming and can thereby create a false impression of the work. Screwing it up is also just a bad sign for the rest of the comic. That’s particularly true when it’s providing details that weren’t actually present in the stories it is recapping.

Anyway, as we get into the story proper, we see MJ performing a scene from the movie.

I am not exactly sure if Williams is trying to make some commentary on Mary Jane here.

The dialogue her character says could be interpreted as commenting upon MJ’s growth as a character, on how she grew more capable of defending herself. Of how as she grew older she realised the real dangers in life were human beings not childish imaginings of monsters.

The main reason I suspect this might’ve been meant as commentary is that the dialogue specifically pints out how people wear masks to hide their true natures.

Masks are a recurrent theme in the Spider-Man mythos and particularly prevalent with MJ’s character.

If this was Williams intent it demonstrates a certain understanding of Spider-lore and of MJ that’s been woefully been lacking for most of the 2010s.

And one could justifiable argue the dialogue about how she grew stronger and more capable of defending herself is supported by her evolution over time. MJ never underwent a clear cut arc where she became more capable of defending herself. She was basically just shown to have bravery, common sense and resourcefulness. The frequent dangerous encounters she endured afforded her chances to put those skills into practice thus she got better at it, but she didn’t undergo active training towards that end like Batman.

Furthermore the dialogue can be argued to be talking about Mysterio as well, specifically the lines about monsters hiding behind pleasant masks. This is applicable to Mysterio’s masquerade as Cage McKnight.

However the comparison (if intentional at all) breaks down in two key areas.

The dialogue implies ‘Mary Jane’ learned that humans are the real monsters in life as she grew older. This is patently not true as MJ’s father was frequently abusive even when MJ was a baby.

This was the norm for Mary Jane’s entire childhood and she herself created a mask of her own to cope with it.

ASM #259

It was even implied MJ suspected Peter of being a ‘monster’ like her father precisely because she knew he hid the truth of himself.

So MJ would’ve been acutely aware that people can be monsters and use masks to hide this fact.

The second way the comparison breaks down regards Mysterio. If we accept that the dialogue is commentating upon Mysterio then it’s Williams acknowledging that Mysterio is  a monster in disguise. This in turn throws her characterization of MJ into question. It implies Williams is knowingly writing Mary Jane as an idiot and out of character. It also doesn’t jive with his sympathetic portrayal in issue #1; nor in fact in this issue as we’ll see.

Of course all of that is hypothetical. I fully admit I might be reading more into this than was intended. Williams could’ve just thought this dialogue seemed cool and that was all.

I should also briefly discuss the artwork. In issue #1 I critiqued it because at times it made the intent ambiguous. In fairness that might be more down to Williams or the editors as opposed to Gomez. I suspect it will become a problem that will crop up moving forward. Nevertheless, it doesn’t detract for the utterly gorgeous aesthetic of his artwork.

With all that’s said let’s get back to the story.

MJ’s scene is interrupted when ‘Cage’ realises a pair of men are removing the wind machine. Actually, they’re removing several pieces of equipment the crew were renting. Mallorie, ‘Cage’s’ right-hand woman (sorry I don’t know Hollywood lingo), snatches a small piece of equipment and makes a point of withholding it from the men. MJ begins to ask what’s going on, turning on some of the charm for one of the men (named Noah).

‘Cage’ though is far less polite, demanding Noah’s attention. He warns him that, once Hollywood hears of this situation, he’ll struggle to find future work. Noah angrily retorts that ‘Cage’ hasn’t paid his rental fees in weeks, a fact confirmed when he checks his phone.

There are a few things to unpack from these pages, most of which further confirms topics we’ve already touched on.

For starters, we could argue Beck’s rudeness and threat exemplifies the danger he poses. Not just because he is a violent man, but also because he is seeking to ruin an innocent man’s business. This is something he could theoretically use McKnight’s reputation to achieve even more effectively.

Admittedly, that’s a little nit-picky.

Beck in Cage’s role here didn’t act unreasonably. He’s a bad person but even a good person could be forgiven or at least understood in this situation.

The real Cage McKnight may well be miffed at his equipment being removed and the lack of professionalism. That wouldn’t necessarily be grounds for Noah’s business to be harmed either if he was genuinely being unprofessional. Not to mention, we could easily give Beck the benefit of the doubt and say his threat was simply a bargaining tactic to get what he wants.

However, what’s less forgivable is Beck’s carelessness.

In the grand scheme of his history, failing to check his phone or pay some bills is hardly his worse crime. But it is endemic of a larger issue. Beck has never made a real movie before, not as the director anyway. The closest he’s ever come are his crimes, which granted would demand certain similar skills. However, he pulled off those crimes with little concern for any henchmen he involved nor any legal or financial obligations. He funded his crimes through other crimes. He viewed his helpers as disposable. And as for breaking the law, that obviously wasn’t going to bother him.

In this story Beck has dozens of people who’s jobs (and possibly their careers) ride on his decisions. The narrative has even painted him as genuinely wanting to help them. And yet he has failed as an incredibly basic responsibility. He hasn’t even considered delegated that task to someone else. It’s exemplary of selfishness at worst, and poor leadership at best.

I’m not trying to argue any of this is out of character for Mysterio. Rather, it’s the implications of this within the status quo that are concerning.

On to of everything else, Mary Jane has decided to go along with Beck’s passion project without considering if he’s even qualified for the job. Creative vision isn’t enough, you need basic competency as well. You need to know how and who to delegate stuff to if it’s not your forte or not what you are interested in.

It’s also further exemplifies the potential damage Beck can bring to the real McKnight’s reputation. If word of this gets out suddenly McKnight at best might be regarded as rude, at worst a poor leader and incompetent. Incompetent with money no less, which (above anything else) is likely to paint him poorly in the eyes of the Hollywood power players.

This misuse of Cage’s reputation continues into the next page where Beck outright throws McKnight’s name around. He claims there has been a mistake because his movie was given a generous budget. Mary Jane tries to calm the situation down and sits in one of the fold out chairs. Her plan is to prevent the men from removing it off the set, a scheme Mallorie (literally) adds some weight to.

In spite of ‘Cage’s’ borderline verbal abuse, Noah expresses respect for Cage and the film project, suggesting he talk to the money people.

By rights MJ in observing this entire scene should be much more sceptical of Beck. At the very least she should wonder if she’s made the right decision in helping him. SPOILERS: She won’t.

What she does do though, is use her charm/social savvy to defuse situations and keep Mysterio under control. This is clearly part of the direction Williams wants to take the series in. In fact it’s the central conceit of this entire issue.

On this front Williams does a superb job. No seriously, I might hate this status quo. I might loathe the mischaracterization facilitating it. I might despise the contrivance that keeps it going. But it’s stuff like this where Williams once more displays a deftness with MJ’s character.

She understands  that Mary Jane possesses superb social skills that can serve as a form of ‘super power’ within certain contexts. Williams has (clumsily) generated one such context and thus allowed MJ to shine. You could genuinely cite or post this scene to exemplify some of the strengths of Mary Jane’s character. If you want a Spider-Man comparison, it’s a little like citing Otto injuring Scorpion from ASM #700 as an example of Peter’s raw power. How we got to that moment was nonsensical but unto itself it is a great example of a singular aspect of the character.

Another example occurs when MJ prompts ‘Cage’ to seek out more money for the film.

This moment demonstrates MJ’s practicality and determination. It’s just a shame that display entails her helping a criminal and suggesting they con yet more people!

The next page is a montage of just that, with Hollywood money people turning them down. ‘Cage’ reacts by angrily flipping tables. In contrast MJ calmly and politely tries to inject some positivity into the meetings.

Williams again does a great job of showing MJ’s personality. She keeps in control and is a great people person. She is practical and knows how to help Mysterio get stuff done.

But take note of ‘Cage’s’ misbehaviour in front of the money people. This opens up the possibility of him being dangerous and unstable, therefore a liability if left unchecked. Were this an exception to the rule or extenuating circumstances, that’d perhaps be understandable. But Mysterio, whilst not exactly defined by his rage, is  a violent person. He has inflicted physical and mental harm/abuse to people. And his bouts of bad behaviour are likely to negatively impact the real McKnight’s chances of working with any of these people in the future.

I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll pick up where we left off last time.

Previous Part

Next Part

Master Post

[cirgaydian-rhythm]

VLD Season 3 babbles

under a cut to save your dashes

First off, DAT KLANCE DOE

I appreciate that Keith very consistently balks at the idea of being the leader, and when he does decide to go through with it (at Lance’s encouragement), he’s belligerent. He simply extends his own reckless behavior to an order for the team because he wants to prove everyone wrong about how good of a leader he can be, because it’s not a position he wants. But it’s a position he has to take, a position he has to learn to be in, because when he pulls the team into his recklessness, people get hurt. There’s no other option.

This is also amazing development for Lance! Waaaaay back in the first episode of season one, Lance claims that Keith is always trying to one-up him, and while this rivalry extends even into s3, Lance finally puts his ego aside and not only concedes to Keith’s new leadership, but actively encourages Keith into it. And when Keith gets reckless, Lance doesn’t gripe about how Black chose wrong or how Keith is the Worst Leader Ever - he just tries to get Keith to calm down and listen to everybody else. Nor did Lance blame Keith or anybody but himself when Blue shut him out - he did fully and sincerely respect Black’s choice, even when it seemed to cost him his position on the team and pretty much the only thing he felt he had going for himself. Blue and his position as the blue paladin were his only points of pride. It’s heartbreaking to see just how quickly he blames himself for that lost connection, and how skeptical he is that the most temperamental lion of the bunch is actively calling for him - after all, why would Picky Red want Easygoing Blue’s castoff?

And pretty much all of Keith’s development of maturity revolves around Lance. When Lance comes to him, insecure about his position on the team now that Shiro’s returned, Keith seems to understand and even reflect his own insecurities in being the leader. I feel like this is a huge part of the reason Keith offers Black back to Shiro and opts to stay behind - he knows he gets reckless and hotheaded in the heat of battle, and of him and Lance, he feels that he’s the more expendable one now that Allura and Lance have a handle on their new lions, and Shiro has returned. Keith can still lead and support the team from the castle, but it keeps them free of his impulsive decisions. Where Lance places a huge amount of his worth on being a paladin, Keith does not, and he’s willing to relinquish that title so that Lance doesn’t feel worthless.

It’s absolutely beautiful to watch these two interact now. They were literally butting heads at every turn in the first season, and now they’re just? so soft with each other?? Keith has a particular softness in his voice when he’s teasing Lance, and while Lance can still say some things pretty bluntly, he’s generally not wrong, and Keith can see where he’s coming from, and Lance is quick to step up and be the Comforting Words Guy and even stop his jokes when he sees he’s actually upsetting Keith. Like, it was great to see the glimpses of cooperation and possible friendship in s1, and even to watch the friendly interactions begin to outnumber the antagonistic ones in s2, but seeing them just being openly friendly and supportive and kind to each other now is a fucking gift.

Secondly, WHO THE FUCK IS SHIRO (AND WHERE THE FUCK IS MATT)

Look, I know everyone and their uncle is convinced that this Shiro is Not The Real Shiro, and I, too, am in that camp. “Kuron” not only is the Japanese pronunciation of “clone,” but includes the word “Kuro” which means “black,” opposite to “Shiro,” which means “white.” From here on, I’m referring to this s3 Shiro as Kuro, because there’s no way this is the Real Shiro.

The issue that I’m having, though, is that I’m not entirely convinced that the Shiro we had before was even the Real Shiro. I think the only Real Shiro we’ve seen was the one at the start of s1, and possibly the one in his flashbacks before his escape. I mean, think about it: Kuro had fever-dream-ish “hallucinations” of the Kuron process - not as he himself in the chair, but as an outsider, as somebody seeing another Shiro... Similar to the visions Shiro had of an “evil” yellow-eyed Shiro.

What if the Real Shiro is with Matt, and has been this whole time? What if, when Shiro proved himself as “Champion,” the Galra experimented with cloning him and extracting his memories and personality to put into the clone, to create this endless supply of fighters? What if the Shiro that crashed on earth was still a prototype, a work in progress, something Ulaz had freed without realizing that this Shiro was not the Real Shiro? This Shiro was still basically Shiro, something indistinguishable from the original, and therefore a poor sleeper agent for the Galra. He fought Zarkon and...what? What happened to him? Because Shiro gets “lost” in his paladin armor, but Kuro comes back in his prisoner garb...and yet they somehow still have the black paladin’s armor? Did they just happen to have another set on board, or was the armor left behind with the bayard? In that case, why did Kuro’s vision have Shiro still in the paladin armor? ARGH. Plotholes. Anyway, the point is, what if the battle “expended” the lifespan of this first clone? Or perhaps they recaptured the clone to re-clone him into a more suitable sleeper agent body because they no longer had the original...

But this also begs the question of who the fuck is funding this. And I think it’s Lotor. I think it’s been Lotor the whole fucking time. iirc, the scientist with the line about “Kuron stage 3″ had on the orangey suits of Lotor’s crew, not red-accented purple suits of Zarkon’s crew. It’s actually entirely possible that Lotor even planned for the first Shiro clone to take out Zarkon, especially seeing as he has no love for his father or his father’s way of doing things. Kuro would now be Lotor’s new sleeper agent, an unwitting weapon for Lotor to use. For what end, I can’t guess, but he seems intent on bolstering the empire via forming alliances and cutting the chaff.

Of course, that just means that if the team does find Matt and Real Shiro, shit’s gonna go dooowwwwwn.

THIRD: I actually really like Lotor?

I see a lot of people either just drooling over him or dismissing him as unengaging, so I feel like an outsider to be really impressed and interested in his actions and motivations. He’s shaping up to be a really great villain! Zarkon was your classic “search and destroy” villain, but Lotor... Lotor does mind games. Lotor is running a Xanatos Gambit wherein no matter the outcome, he wins. While Zarkon held some surprises, his basic motivation was known from the start, and you could predict his actions based on that motivation. Not Lotor. We don’t know what Lotor’s end game is, we don’t know what his motivations are, and we don’t know what he’s capable of. He’s a mystery, and he cunningly keeps himself that way. He refuses to show his hand, and he’s far more strategic than his father. He’s looking to be a nasty adversary, but I’m also hoping for a redemption arc (especially because his girls are just A+)

Fourth: SHLAV IS REAL

That is all.

[tebbyclinic11]

Obsessed: Garrett Oliver on Brewing Better Beer

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Obsessed: Garrett Oliver on Brewing Better Beer

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[Photographs: Vicky Wasik, except where noted]

Editor’s Note: Welcome back to Obsessed, the interview series in which we talk to uniquely driven amateurs and professionals from all across the food world. We hope to shed light on the passions that inspire enthusiastic food nerds, from home cooks to chefs on the line to veteran butchers, fishmongers, and farmers. Hopefully we’ll also pick up some of their favorite tips, tricks, and food wisdom along the way. Know somebody who you think would be perfect for this interview series? Email us!

For many people now reading this, Garrett Oliver doesn’t need an introduction. As the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, Oliver has for decades been one of the strongest and most eloquent advocates for the craft beer movement. While his primary passion is beer and its brewing, Oliver has impressively expansive tastes and a seemingly perfect sense of taste memory, a combination that led to the publication of The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer With Real Food in 2003, in which he makes the convincing case that food pairs better with good beer—or “real beer,” as he calls it—than with wine.

Oliver went on to edit The Oxford Companion to Beer, a task he undertook in large part to share what he’d learned over the years, although he describes it in more selfish terms. As he put it to me: “I ended up doing the Oxford Companion because you get more out of most things by giving them away than trying to hold on to them.”

And, of course, all the while, Oliver and his crew over at Brooklyn Brewery have been busy making a whole bunch of real beer. I spoke with Oliver both over the phone and by email, and, though our (very long) conversation ranged across many subjects, we’ve managed to pare down and isolate all the bits that are about beer.

[Photograph: Matt Furman]

Name: Garrett Oliver

Age: 55

Day job: Brewmaster, Brooklyn Brewery

Instagram: @igarrettoliver

Facebook: facebook.com/GarrettOliver

Twitter: @GarrettOliver

What is your earliest memory involving beer?

Garrett Oliver: My uncle Bill drank beer and favored Miller. I’d constantly ask to taste it, and he’d turn me down. One day, when I was 12, I asked and he handed me the can. I took one swig and spat it out into the lawn. It was pretty awful, in a way that sticks with you. The old cans seem to have had a definite flavor to them, so the beer was grainy in a bad way, and it was metallic at the same time. Not a pleasant combination. I wasn’t at all interested in beer for quite a few years.

After my grandfather died, I found out that he’d home-brewed during Prohibition. Unfortunately, he passed before I started home-brewing—it would have been a cool thing to share with him.

I read that you studied filmmaking in college, as opposed to anything related to brewing beer. What was it that drew you to filmmaking?

GO: I’m a very visual person, perhaps something I got from my father, who was an art director working for a top advertising agency. He was an old-school “mad man,” and in those days, storyboards and other visual designs were drawn by hand. I didn’t want to be in advertising, but I did want to be involved with design.

Do you think your interest in filmmaking and your interest in design have any connection with what you do now?

GO: Oh, absolutely. In fact, in a certain weird way, I feel they are essentially the same thing. If you think about film, you can be a film director and direct a summer blockbuster. You have good actors, and the actors’ teeth are all shiny, and the car chase happens, and the cars look great. It’s a film that looks great on the screen—the car chases are executed perfectly—but there’s no real heart to the script. Everybody’s just phoned it in. It can be technically brilliant, but when you leave the theater, that’s two hours of your life that you’ll never get back, and you say to yourself, “Why did I think that this was going to be something that I wanted to see?” To me, that’s what mass-market brewing is like. There’s all the money and all the technology, but the actual aim is so insipid that there’s really nothing there but money, in the end.

On the other hand, when you’re watching student films, you might see flashes of brilliance, real heart, see that someone’s poured their soul into a film, but the lighting is no good, and the sound sounds like it was done in somebody’s bathroom. The person has something to say, but they don’t have the ability to say it.

To me, the balance that a great brewer should have would be to have both—they have to have something to say and the ability to say it. I think there are probably only a few brewers that I know who can really do that, and I’m not claiming myself as one of them.

People will say that Anheuser-Busch can’t make beer. Well, that’s not true; they can make beer the same way that there’s a lot of musicians that can make music. Kenny G can play the saxophone. It’s not like he can’t play it; it’s just that you never in your life want to hear it. He has skills, but there’s no soul in it. That’s why no one that I know, anyway, is ever going to mention Kenny G as a great artist. Does he have chops, can he play? Of course he can play.

I guess that’s kind of, in a way, part of what makes craft beer. I think the spirit of American craft beer is so strong partially because we all had other lives first. We had other intentions, we meant to do something else, and then we basically threw it away for love. And that is what takes this from a job into a movement. Almost everyone gave up their degree, whatever they got their degree in, and had to go back to their parents, probably, and tell them, “Guess what? You paid for me to go to college, et cetera, and that degree in whatever I got—I’m not going to do that. I’m going to go make beer.” Believe me, 20 or 30 years ago, that wasn’t exactly a cool-sounding thing.

There is an actual, rather stringent definition of craft beer, isn’t there?

GO: To me, there are many definitions of craft beer. Now, the craft beer definition you’re talking about, which is promulgated by the Brewers Association—a lot of craft brewers don’t agree with that definition. It’s a rather complicated, almost legalistic definition. I think, in certain ways, people are asking the wrong question. The Brewers Association—I don’t blame them. In order to defend and promote something, you have to actively define what you’re defending and promoting, especially as a nonprofit organization. So they had to basically make this Frankenstein monster of splitting hairs about who was going to be a craft brewer and who wasn’t. But craft brewing, to me, is the product of an individual vision, one that’s trying to make something beautiful. And that’s what really distinguishes craft beer from other beer.

An actual auteur is trying to make something that is going to move you and has a meaning to it. I think that you can be a huge brewery and still be a craft brewery at heart. You can be a tiny brewery and have sold out at the very beginning. It’s not necessarily a matter of size. It matters what your intention is, which is a thing that you can’t really put down on paper, which is almost impossible to define, but it is one of those things that when you see it, you know it.

I think at your average craft brewery, there are at least some people, whether they’re beer geeks or not, who know who the head brewer is. If nobody’s ever really heard of the brewer, you can be pretty sure that’s not a craft brewery.

Were you a beer drinker in college? What was your preferred brand or style? Was it something that you paid much attention to?

GO: Basically, we drank pretty much anything in college. So-called “cocktails,” like Long Island iced teas, screwdrivers, kamikazes, the works. When it came to beer, to tell you the honest truth, when we had a little extra money, we bought Budweiser. Budweiser tasted like water, but the other stuff was genuinely nasty: Knickerbocker, Haffenreffer, Mickey’s Big Mouth…awful stuff. Sometimes we’d find a bottle of Guinness and spike three or four Budweisers with it; that was about as good as it got.

In your book, you have a very evocative description of your discovery of “real beer” in London after college. What year was that? You say in the book that you thought, upon your arrival, that it seemed appropriate to mark the occasion with a beer. Do you think you can recall the way you thought of beer before that pivotal first taste of real ale? Was it just a beverage you drank as a matter of course when celebrating?

GO: My first real beer was truly astonishing to me. I wasn’t even sure I liked it, but it was definitely one of the most interesting things I’d ever tasted. We drank beer in college any time we went out, which was pretty much every night. But we never truly liked it, or at least I didn’t. I didn’t actually like beer until I moved to London. That was 1983, and then in ’84, I traveled across Europe and discovered that the world of beer was larger still. But I was only slightly geekier about beer than my English friends…everyone I knew there thought that cask-conditioned beer was awesome. I’d never seen a “beer culture” before, but England definitely had one.

When you started home-brewing, you say in your book that it was mostly because that was the only way to taste the flavors and kinds of beer you had experienced abroad. What kind of resources did you have to work with? Where did you turn for instruction and guidance about brewing beer?

GO: My only resources were Charlie Papazian’s book The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, and, eventually, my fellow home brewers. It’s hard for people to imagine it now, but this was more than a decade before the internet. I bought ingredients from a place called Milan Labs, in what would later be called Noho, at the edges of the East Village and Little Italy. They had sold winemaking supplies to Italian immigrants for generations, but by the ‘80s, their old customers were gone, and they turned to beer. They knew nothing about brewing, and they weren’t interested, but they did sell the equipment.

How did you find like-minded home brewers back then?

GO: I’m pretty sure it was a classified ad in a newsletter put out by Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School, which became the Institute for Culinary Education. Somebody bought an ad saying that they were looking for other home brewers. We coalesced around Brewsky’s, a bar on East 7th Street, down the block from McSorley’s. In those days, it was one of the very, very few places that carried relatively exotic beers. This was in 1987 or something like that. In order to tell everybody when our meetings were going to be and whatever else, it was all done by mail, which sounds crazy to us now.

What did you all do at these meetings?

GO: What it was was pooling shared experience. You might hear about the American Homebrewers Association, and then you’d say, “Oh, I should join that,” and then you’d start getting their magazine. You might see some old brewing books, but there weren’t many home-brewing books around at all at the time. You’d get advice from home brewers, or, occasionally, from a professional brewer, about how to improve your beer. ��Clean stuff in this way, rather than in that way,” or “Don’t add such huge amounts of sugar.” You might go to a meeting, and you’d learn one thing, one small-seeming thing, but it would kind of change the way that you did everything.

What was the first beer you brewed?

GO: My first home-brewed beer was a pale ale called “Blast.” It was loosely based, at least in my mind, on Samuel Smith’s Pale Ale, a favorite for me in London. Unfortunately, I followed the instructions in the home-brewing kit, which called for large amounts of white sugar. The beer had some nice flavors, but was marred by an acrid, cider-like tang. I later learned that the white sugar was the culprit; the instructions were really for making cheap beer, not good beer. The home-brewing kits were all British, and the British could all get good beer at the pub. I got pretty good quickly, though.

Do you think that serious beer aficionados (or beer snobs, as some might say) get a bad rap?

GO: I think pretty much all rabid fans of pretty much anything tend to look and sound ridiculous to other people. My eyes roll when I hear people talking sports stats, for example. People seem threatened, though, by any sort of connoisseurship of anything, and I have little sympathy for that attitude. People are having an awesome time with whatever thing they’re into…what does that have to do with you? You can learn to love that thing yourself, or you can roll your eyes, but actually worrying about someone else’s fandom is bizarre. No one should care that I think being rabid about corporate sports teams is ridiculous…and I don’t care that they think my devotion to craft beer is ridiculous.

I know you got into a bit of a back-and-forth with David Chang in GQ about bad beer. What would you say to someone who insists that all they want out of a beer is that it be light and insipid? Would you try to change their mind? How would you go about doing it?

GO: If someone actually wants something insipid, and they know that it’s empty, I’m not trying to talk them out of it. All I can do is tell them, “You’re missing a lot of great stuff, and that’s a shame for you.” If they show any interest, then they don’t need to know much to really improve everyday life. I mean, I don’t eat mac and cheese out of a box anymore, or white supermarket bread, or standard supermarket cheese. I escaped those things at the very first opportunity, and I’m not even slightly nostalgic for them.

What do you think defines a “good beer”? Is it dependent on styles? Or is there a common rubric you use when judging beers?

GO: Structure, balance, elegance, and deliciousness. That’s what I want, each and every time.

I don’t think many people think of beer that way. Most people are thinking of beer as a refreshment that rinses down hot dogs and potato chips. You’re not looking at the Budweisers of the world and saying, “Hey, that would make a nice food pairing.��

“Balance” really means you don’t want one character within the beer to overwhelm everything else—screaming bitterness without any sweetness or malt character, sweetness that doesn’t have any acid or bitterness to play against it. And I think it’s possible to overdo almost anything. We see this in food, where somebody might use so much coriander that you can’t taste anything else.

That kind of leads to the idea of structure: A beer has to be put together in an interesting way. The experience of drinking a good beer, it’s like a short story. It should start off interesting, it should stay interesting through the middle, and it should finish satisfyingly. If it can’t hold your attention in some way, shape, or form, it’s probably not very good. It’s tricky, and I think it’s true of any kind of food or any kind of drink. That’s one reason why I wrote The Brewmaster’s Table in a very different kind of form than you often see. It’s written as a form of experience that’s not static or dead on the page, because the way you actually taste things is not in a millisecond. Flavor happens over time, and it happens in a certain way. So maybe something tastes sweet up front and then dries out. We’ve all had dishes that, at first, you eat them and they don’t seem hot, but then they get spicier and spicier and spicier, and two minutes later, your mouth is on fire. We have also eaten dishes that start off really, really spicy, but then five minutes later, you’re fine. They’re completely different kinds of chilies or balances or whatever else, and if you’re going to talk about that dish, you have to talk about what it did, not just what it is.

What about elegance? What is elegant about a good beer? Seems to me that it might be a maker’s value, or a brewer’s value, and, say, the random beer drinker from off the street wouldn’t taste a beer and say, “Oh, that’s elegantly done.”

GO: For me, elegance is similar to balance. It’s a matter of seeming effortless. Balance, structure, and elegance are different ideas in my mind, but they’re certainly interrelated. The random beer drinker might not put it in these terms, but I think people know elegance when they get it. One of the tricky things in making everyday beers is that it’s not hard to make a beer that is impressive at the top of the glass. The first sip of an okay beer generally tastes pretty good, especially if you’ve had a long day. But the question is: What does it taste like when you’re three-quarters of the way down the pint? If you can be really impressive there, when the person who’s drinking it is already looking forward to their second pint of the same beer, now you’ve got something. I can’t tell you how many dishes of food or how many beers I’ve had that start well, but by the time you’re three-quarters of the way through, you’re already tired of it. It just doesn’t come together a certain way.

If it’s a beer at a bar, what you want as a brewer, from a commercial point of view, is, somebody goes and gets a Brooklyn Lager, and what they get next is another Brooklyn Lager. You don’t want them to say, “Well, that was fine, but I’m going to have something else,” or “I’m going to have a margarita.” That’s a failure.

How do you go about developing new beer flavors?

GO: Ferran Adrià broke this down fascinatingly in his book on culinary creativity. Basically, and this is a great simplification, he said that there are four levels of creativity: (1) Copying. You do what you were taught to do, exactly how you were taught to do it. (2) The “twist.” I take standard pale ale and perhaps add vanilla or orange to it. Different, but not really groundbreaking. (3) You invent a new flavor or use a technique that hasn’t been seen before, resulting in a unique beer. (4) You invent a technique or idea so fundamentally powerful that a multitude of new beers can be created from it. On the culinary side, Adrià’s invention of stable alginate foams is a good example. Once you know how to make stable foam, you can then make foams out of almost anything. That’s the highest level.

We practice all four of these forms, and each has its own validity. And frankly, most people never get to level four, and if you do, you’re lucky to get there even once.

Can you talk about the variety of yeast strains you use in the brewing process? What are the most common strains? What are some uncommon ones?

GO: We’ve used dozens of strains over the years. Various Belgian strains (we were very early to those—we were making saisons in the ‘90s, when very few people had even heard of them), German lager strains, weissbier strains, and “wild” yeast strains, like Brettanomyces.

There are two main families of brewer’s yeast: the lager yeast, which is a cold-fermenting yeast, by and large, and ale yeast, which is traditionally a warm-fermenting yeast. From a flavor point of view, lager yeast tends to be very direct and leave you with ingredient flavors. So when you taste a pilsner, for example, you taste malt and you taste hops. You don’t taste that much else that the yeast gives you. It’s not like the yeast is giving you nothing—there are some subtle things that it does—but an ale yeast might taste like oranges or, in the case of wheat beer, it might taste like bananas, cloves, and bubblegum. For a lot of these warm-fermented beers, the yeast flavor is as important as the original ingredient flavor. With lagers, that doesn’t tend to be the case.

So then, when you use wild yeast strains like Brettanomyces, you do it because of the unique flavors that they can give to a beer?

GO: Exactly. In some ways, Brettanomyces explores, in its flavor profile, the funkier side, if you like, of flavors. They run a huge gamut, from smelling and tasting kind of like different dried fruits and cinnamon to, at the bad end, smelling like sewer gas, or smelling like Band-Aids, or any number of other things. The really tricky thing about using these yeast strains effectively is finding the right strains and controlling them to give you the good stuff rather than the bad stuff.

And that’s one reason why Brettanomyces was by and large driven out of brewing for many years. The best stuff you could get from Brettanomyces was more interesting than anything that you were going to get from traditional saccharomyces brewer’s yeast, but what brewers traditionally were looking for was predictability, and if you could deliver the same thing to the consumer every time, that was a thing that was going to make you a success. That’s among the things that brewers like Anheuser-Busch were really able to do and how they outdid their competition.

Is there a beer you’ve come up with that you’re particularly proud of? What about it is important to you?

GO: Not surprisingly, I’m happy about a lot of my beers. Local 1 is a beer that defined a new era for the brewery, and it remains a favorite. Sorachi Ace remains a uniquely compelling beer that people love, despite or because of its oddball character. But the beers I probably connect with most deeply are those based on lees (sediments) collected from wild fermentations of wine and cider. These all take more than a year to produce, but they are among the most complex beers I’ve ever tasted and definitely the most complex that we’ve brewed. These beers bring together a lot of my interests and bridge the gap between science and art.

Are you working on any beers right now? Anything that’s particularly challenging about them?

GO: Scaling our well-loved sour, Bel Air, from smaller batches up to full-scale production is definitely a challenge, but one we look forward to. We have the latest version of our “modern IPA,” Defender, out now, and it’s tasting great, so I’m happy about that. And we’re slowly chipping away at some truly fascinating Brett work. I think sours and Brett have a big future in the near-mainstream, or at least in the mainstream of craft brewing. To read beer publications, you’d think we’d arrived there, but we haven’t. We will, though.

How would you characterize the state of beer in the United States today? Do you think it compares favorably with other countries?

GO: We remain the most feverishly creative of the beer-producing countries, and that’s something to be proud of. Britain, Germany, and Belgium provide the foundation of most of our work, but now we’re running the ball. I think a number of other countries will become exciting pretty soon. Would you believe that there are nearly 1,500 breweries in France? And Brazil is using its natural advantages, such as dozens of fruits that the average American has never even heard of. Which is great, because the current focus on IPA is pretty boring. I love IPA, but…

What does the term “ghost bottles” mean at Brooklyn Brewery?

GO: Those are the great many things that we create but don’t sell. There are probably about 60 or 70 of them right now. Some lead to commercial releases; most don’t. Some pretty much can’t. But we’ll keep doing them because it keeps our creative wheels spinning, and a lot of them are delicious. They are definitely ways to work out new ideas, check out yeast strains and see what they do, check out new kinds of barrels and see what they do. I don’t worry at all whether anything will ever come of them.

There are ways to taste them. Usually, we do tasting-menu dinners at which these will make an appearance. Just because you don’t sell them doesn’t mean that no one tastes them. We do take them out there, and we make them part of what we do. Ghost bottles are kind of part of the backstory of the brewery. Some of our beers start off as an experiment, and then we actually execute the idea. So we made a kriek, which is a type of beer made with cherries, and we released it: K Is for Kriek. We made a sour, kiwi-based beer, called Kiwi’s Playhouse, that we released relatively recently, like six months ago. And both of those were originally ghost bottles.

Recently, at an event in Scotland, in Edinburgh, I served both versions [the released version and an earlier one] of Kiwi’s Playhouse. It was actually a mistake—somehow we ended up with both versions there at the same time. They weren’t supposed to be there, but I said, “Let’s serve both of them; it’s going to be even better.” It’s almost as if you get to see a drawing for a painting you know, see the artist working it out. So at that event, I had an opportunity to talk about what I liked about this beer when I did it, why I thought it was too simplistic to bring out at $20 a bottle, and the things that I did to try to fix it. The original thing is an inspiration, and I tried to elaborate on it for a commercial version.

What do you think about the current diversity of the American brewing scene? I know the lack of diversity—that the industry generally is dominated by white men—has been written about at length, and you are often pointed to as one of the few exceptions to the rule. Is there something about the industry itself that erects barriers for minority brewers to get involved? Or is it simply an issue of image?

GO: I have to admit that this question, which I’ve been asked a lot lately, does get under my skin. The lack of diversity in craft beer has nothing to do with craft beer. You might as well ask about the lack of diversity in serious restaurant kitchens, or restaurant server staff, or dining rooms. Or golf, or ice skating, or in boardrooms, or, actually, most things. Americans are segregated, and the craft brewing culture is based in America. It’s not that people are actively trying not to hire African-Americans; it’s more that they never even think about or consider African-Americans in any particular way. Most people hire people they know, or people who are like people they know. And in America, we generally don’t know each other. That’s a bad thing, but brewers are not to blame for the ills of society.

Do you think the lack of diversity in the industry is changing?

GO: Not much—a little bit, but not much. I’m not nearly the only African-American brewmaster in the United States. I’m just the only one most people know, because I’ve been around for nearly 30 years and I’ve been pretty loud. Things will not really change without active outreach into minority communities. Almost no one tries to sell craft beer to diverse communities, so how are people supposed to know about it? I doubt you see huge participation from the Asian, Latino, or Native American communities either, though Latinos have certainly come along faster.

What are your favorite beers right now to drink? Any beers in particular, either your own or others, that you’d like to highlight as particularly worth trying?

GO: There are genuinely too many to mention. In our area, I’m really enjoying the beers by Hudson Valley, and I had some really nice stuff last night from Folksbier.

Is there one piece of equipment that you cannot make beer without?

GO: One day I want to write or edit a book with a title ripped off wholesale from Julia Child. I’ll call it Stand Facing the Kettle. Many things are negotiable, but it’s hard to get much done without a kettle.

Do you have any tips for aspiring home brewers? Any resources, like online purveyors or blogs or books, that you think would be helpful?

GO: I can’t say I’d know—I haven’t home-brewed in years. But there are a lot of very talented fellow home brewers out there, and these days they are all a few clicks away. These kids today don’t know how easy they have it! Back in my day….

[Photograph: Matt Furman]

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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