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vroenis · 4 years ago

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2020 Music In Review

When this was a draft, it opened with a bit about me not writing, but then I started playing board games again and wrote two bits on board games. In the trashfire that 2020 was (add “trashfire” to dictionary, no I did not mean “trash fire”), and 2021 continues to be, somehow I ended up getting back into board games. Actually there are good and logical reasons I returned to them and if you’re interested in that, I go into some of it in those journals, but more interesting is just playing the games so you should totally HMU if you’re local, sorry I don’t do virtual/digital, I like handling physical pieces and sharing food.

The most natural way for me to wrap a year for me is in music and since Melbourne locked down in March, I spent a lot of time working from home and listening on my own gear which I can’t express enough the joy at being able to do - firstly at having good reference transducers and secondly not having to listen to trash radio.

Writing about art is always a bit weird but it’s good fun so we do it anyway so let’s write some words about art. There are three main ways I engage with music in no particular order - more or less however I happen to notice them;

Music and musicianship - tonal and rhythmic composition

Technical production - recording, editing/manipulionation, processing/production, mixing and balance, and mastering

Song-writing/lyrics - should there be any - excludes vocal performance as this is covered under the first one.

To get weirder about it, I tend to have both emotional and also pragmatic responses to those three things separately so that means there’s a wackadoo matrix of 6 criteria I seem to be assessing every piece of music I encounter against and yep, that’s a thing I do, all the time, every time. The better a piece of music is, tho, the more the line between the emotional and pragmatic blurs as the overall quality of the work is established. I might begin with an initial pragmatic appreciation of an excellent mix and balance, and technical execution of a recording and production, then come to get a feel for how emotional a work is - and vice-versa. Sometimes on rare occasions, it all happens at the same time - an album is just a smashing work of excellence in every way and I just love every aspect of it more over time.

It’s worth mentioning I don’t really have any great axe to grind with pop music - there has always been and continues to be great pop, and good pop isn’t by any means easy music to create. For me at least, and likely many people, what destroys pop as a listening experience is repetition which usually isn’t under the listener’s control, but an unfortunate side-effect of the underlying culture that sustains pop as an industry. I still appreciate and admire so much about pop-music and always keep a little in my collection from each decade. No matter what, always remind yourself that the kids are OK and that there’s always great pop-music around - stay in touch with it. Some of it is truly awesome, and I use the superlative with sincerity.

Albums Of The Year

A few things happened on the way to me actually getting to write this journal, including some surgery (I’m fine), but also I ended up nominating no less than 4 Albums Of The Year. I think they deserve their own lengthier write-ups, in a weirdly me thing to do, I feel like I want to talk less about them and you should just go and listen to them but they have been getting a lot of air-time on my channels - in any case, here’s a lazylink to the instagram post I did for them. They’re all great and they feature in the lists coming in this entry so give them a listen, they’re outstanding.

Personal Charts

When I set out to write a musical summary of the year, I went to my last.fm page to see what I’d listened to by number of plays polled. As mentioned, given the Covid lockdown and working from home so much, I’ve actually gotten to register a lot more of my listening on the site whereas in general so much of my listening happens offline, so to speak, be it in the car or on my mp3 player. This year has also seen a serious shift in my buying habits shift entirely to Bandcamp for a few reasons; Google shut down their Play store in favour of streaming because naturally it favours them and not artists - it also just makes sense for them from infrastructure and administrative perspectives, but also I just did more and more research and naturally found more and more artists and Bandcamp just made sense. I want to write a digest as to why you should do the same but I feel like people need to find their own way there or approach me directly so the motivation comes from them. Streaming is bad for artists and while I and indeed artists don’t want you to close your premium accounts just yet because closing any revenue streams to artists in any way is bad, I encourage you to do some research into just how much revenue there is in streaming, and what your expectations are for how you think the artists you love so much are supposed to make a living. I guess if your engagement level is fairly low, or the culture you’re into is pop-music, then this is the end of the discussion and that’s OK, we don’t need to take it any further. If you’re in any way curious about what this issue is, this video by Benn Jordan is a great place to start.

There are two charts I’d like to share - one is my top 10 albums I’ve chosen, the other is the same albums by number of plays as per my last.fm polling. These aren’t the top 10 albums I polled, mind-you. Sometimes I listen to an album a whole bunch just because I’m into it or because it slaps, but it isn’t one I’d nominate as an album that encapsulates the year.

You’ll immediately notice not every album was released in 2020, however my conditions are that they either had to have been released close enough to 2020 that I’d have done heavy listening in the year, or I had to have purchased them in 2020 so they were new to me in the year.

Here are the 10 albums I chose;

And here they are by number of plays polled in 2020 - bear in mind I probably played one or two favourite tracks a few times more, so they don’t neatly divide by number of tracks listed on the album;

A few immediate things to note;

- Dreams Are Not Enough is significantly underrepresented because I don’t listen to it at my PC while I work. In general, I definitely listen to this far more in environments offline, but also it’s not exactly an all occasions album given its tone and atmosphere, if you know what I mean, and if you don’t - give it a listen and find out.

- La Favière on the other hand is more or less a bit of a party so I play it a lot… yet when it comes to my personal rankings, it’s not that I like it less per se, it’s just that I love the other albums more - tons of respect to Iversen. It still made 10th on a list of hundreds of albums and netted 161 plays out of thousands of files I have.

- Had I done this kind of list in 2019 and known about Reid Willis, I suspect The Longing Device would have been an Album Of The Year then. It was a dead ringer for an Album Of The Year for me this year except then he released Mother Of and that is an absolute killer, so he outdid himself and I selected that instead. Reid Willis is a genius.

- There’s a long story as to why I only bought Hanan Townshend’s soundtrack for To The Wonder in 2020 but at least I was delayed long enough to not produce any more plastic, given my original intention once upon a time was to get it on CD. In any case, I had to buy it on iTunes and was bedstricken from illness for days after. iTunes is cursed.

Telefon Tel Aviv - Dreams Are Not Enough (October 2019)

In 2009, Telefon Tel Aviv released their album Immolate Yourself and then Charles Cooper died. I didn’t actually find out about his death until after I’d heard the album a few times over, but the album stayed with me for the 10 years to the new album as a landmark like no other. In part for the mourning of Charles, but simultaneously and separately as something that stood apart as some sound for my life that no other music could touch. Maybe The Haxan Cloak’s Excavation, maybe Darkside’s Psychic, but each of those in different ways.

10 years later and Joshua Eustis continues his long journey and releases Dreams Are Not Enough in the Telefon Tel Aviv name. After my first listen, I tweeted to him that I felt like deleting the rest of my music collection which we had a laugh about (he’s a very sociable person, by the way, if you’re not an asshole - he’s also someone you can learn a lot about the industry from). The thing is - I want to have these kinds of exaggerated reactions to the art I engage with - I want them to be world-destroying. Sure, not every piece of art has to be immense and euphoric and devastating, but it can’t all be run-of-the-mill either.

It’s difficult for me to describe Dreams Are Not Enough in practical terms, it is still a Telefon album, it is also Telefon without Charles, it’s also mourning him, is it moving on in his absence? It is definitely its own art for you to engage with as a unique work, to you the individual. It’s uniquely Telefon Tel Aviv in a way that no other electronic artist does the same way - it feels a specific way and there are times when no other music will do. One of my running jokes is that Porpentine’s Howling Dogs and Cardboard Computer’s Kentucky Route Zero will be my Game(s) Of The Year every year forever and Dreams Are Not Enough now with Immolate Yourself are going to last 10, 20 years - longer - as Albums Of The Year forever too because there’s just never anything else like them.

Reid Willis - The Longing Device (January 2019)

The good thing about having made my choices earlier in 2020 is that Reid WIllis’ Mother Of wasn’t out when I wrote-up the list, so I get to talk about The Longing Device.

Reid Willis was an absolutely random find on Bandcamp. Occasionally I like to dive into subgenres and just go hunting. You can imagine that 9 times out of 10 this is a fruitless endeavour and might think this is frustrating but I really enjoy doing it as an exercise in critical listening. By whatever turn of divine Bandcamp listing, I came across the first chronological album he has up, Crude Healing (2016) and from memory listened to four tracks before instant-buying his entire discography available. I did go hunting on the Google Play store before it was shuttered and buy the most recent album from 2013, The Sunken Half listed from his older works before he jumped over to Bandcamp for all his newer albums and it’s definitely a transitional work to what he does now and well worth having. While Crude Healing initially blew me away, The Longing Device is a more mature album that has been more carefully shaped, skills having been honed and focussed into a less raw and yet more powerful sound. Very rarely am I ever an “I liked your old stuff better than your new stuff” kind of person, in general I tend to go with an artist when they evolve and grow unless on occasion they go in a completely different direction in which case hey - I respect it but sometimes it’s just not something I feel.

Here Willis’ orchestrations are careful, beautiful and languished in the right moments - cut with beats and edits, and the beats and edits likewise deftly cut with orchestrations. This is such a stunning exhibition of creativity, it’s one of the more esoteric examples of my music collection and also in some ways perhaps one of the more approachable works. Then in November Willis released Mother Of where he just takes everything to the next level.

Mat Zo - Illusion Of Depth (October 2020)

In July of 2020, Above & Beyond released their ongoing regular compilation Anjunabeats volume 15 and finished the first disc with a bangin’ Mat Zo track called Problems, an instant favourite of mine as soon as I heard it. It’s a tough year for DJs and musos all round not being able to tour, Josh Eustice and many others have been doing year-round commentary about irresponsible alleged “underground” gigs have nothing to do with the old-school spirit of underground at all and have turned into superspreader events, and how publishers and labels haven’t supported artists through Covid. Leading up to October, Anjuna and Mat Zo promote his forthcoming album and I have to admit, I’m pretty hyped and then it drops.

Holy shit.

In a year of such terrible events, this felt like such a timely dose of positivity that arrived at just the right time. I wrote a whole damn entry for this on instragram, and it’s one of my Albums Of The Year, but far out the digest of this album. On one hand, it’s a hugely technically accomplished work - it’s a diverse exhibition of styles, musicianship, stellar production, and absolutely pristine mix and balance - on the other hand, it’s just an absolute fucken banger-riot-party of an album. The album stands up to a clinical listening on reference transducers, it’s such a delight to audition and examine in every way, but you can set all of that aside and just enjoy the experience, front to back through the tracks in order and as an album, that’s becoming quite rare. There are levels of production discipline on display in this album, especially for electronic music in difficult mixing environments with potentially cluttered frequency ranges that a lot of artists need to learn from, yet Maz Zo executes with ease. This has a lot to give no matter who you are, whether you want to sit down and listen, dance all night or go for a drive - a word of warning, it might make you want to drive fast!

It’s also worth noting that Mat toured this album virtually in Minecraft in order to be Covid-safe and that is absolutely freaken amazing.

Hanan Townshend - To The Wonder (April 2013)

Not the best choice of cover-art, but to be fair, no-one likes Terrence Malick films so it doesn’t really matter. Like most things, getting into music tends to be multifaceted. To The Wonder is my favourite Malick film and yes, I love many of them (you can check the Film Notes page), probably because it’s the most intimate and grounded of his narratives. I still like the more grand and abstract stories he tells, they’re very much my bag, too, but To The Wonder really is a simple story about people told from a closeness that is for some perhaps uncomfortable, but I love that closeness. There’s a dream-like quality to Malick’s filmmaking and indeed cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s photography that is both surreal and organic that makes the film feel very real and then like recollection once it’s done. Hanan Townshend’s music perfectly matches it, and then like all good soundtracks transcends the purpose for which it was written and can be applied to life outside of its matching media. There is a certain framing I have in my mind and at times, with the way I quite literally see, that makes me cue this soundtrack. Very few other soundtracks have this kind of power - Kenji Kawaii’s work for Ghost In The Shell (inclusive of Innocence), Hajime Mizogughi’s Jin-Roh and Cliff Martinez’ Solaris would be some of the others.

Daniel McCagh - Altered States (April 2020)

Another semi-random Bandcamp find, I was chuffed to learn that Daniel McCagh is from Albury, NSW, Australia. It’s always amazing to find local artists who are this astonishingly talented. I tend to associate Australian musicians at the not-quite-there-yet level of art and still do. That’s not a criticism of the artists themselves, it’s a criticism of our government and their backwards attitude towards arts funding and economics in this country. We are a developed country in the age of the internet where information and culture is shared instantly but we deny our people opportunities in so many ways - in education, facilities, commerce and economic infrastructure - the state of internet services in this country for a start is appalling and has been behind global standards forever. It will take us so much time, funds, resources and coordination to catch-up and of-course the longer we wait, the greater the cost and each successive government makes their excuses as to why we can never quite afford to do things right.

Props to individuals who can make it stick, tho, and Daniel McCagh is one of them. It’s probably shockingly unfair to hold someone up on a pedestal every time they do well but I can’t help it - Altered States is on par with Reid Willis’ and other dark ambient/electronic works or whatever genre you want to put them into. On Bandcamp these darker synth and drone-centric artists are a dime a dozen and to be fair, a lot of them are quite good but finding works that truly stand out in excellence can be difficult. The low play-count is due to having only found and bought the album quite late, but it goes into rotation fairly often and it’s a growing genre in my collection.

The 1975 - Notes On A Conditional Form (May 2020)

The closest thing to pop music to hit this list, NOACF was going to appear at some point - just getting pipped at the finish-line by Reid Willis, all told. I listened to this in the car quite a bit when I was still in rotation in the office before full lockdown.

Writing about The 1975 will be a Thing - either you’ll know something about them or nothing at all. For me, I guess I engage with them entirely differently from superfans - I’m in my late 30s so it won’t surprise you that I don’t have a TikTok account nor do I op a Spotify account and I’m not active at all on Facebook altho neither are gen Z. That said, I’m not entirely sure who their core fanbase will be - they don’t strike me as chart-topping, TikTok everpresent pop-culture icons. Their lead singer certainly has the awareness of pop-culture to communicate with their fan-base to keep up, but they don’t seem to engage at the same level of the lists you see on say, Todd in the Shadows - but I’ve not watched enough of him to know if he’s ever mentioned them.

Anyway I’m enough of a musician (read: snob) to dig their lofty musical stuff - it’s the perfect follow-up and follow-on from ABIIOR and I Like It When You Sleep... before that. Their sound stays uniquely theirs while slowly evolving with contemporary sounds, all the while the production stays top-notch and I’m always pleased with what I hear from a mixing and balance perspective. It also sort of launched with one of the most exciting singles I’ve heard in a while If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know) which has to be one of the absolute best recreations of the quintessential 90’s sound yet with contemporary production discipline I’ve ever heard. Many have tried yet most have failed. I always have so much respect when an artist can nail this kind of thing because it’s immensely difficult to do and I’m so proud of The 1975 for pulling this off. All of their genre homages and tilts on this album - actually on all of their albums since I Like It When You Sleep… have been stellar and I continue to be impressed.

I’m also completely onboard with their performative behaviour - they remind me of the angsty political U2 et al of old, but with the necessary contemporary tilt we need. Matty as a front-person is grounded, sensible, vulnerable, flawed - been thru some shit and talks openly about it. I don’t care how much of it is genuine, it reads and plays genuinely. I’m not a superfan so I don’t have posters of him on my wall nor hang on every word he says, but if I was 16 or 23 and did, I think he’s saying the right things. Setting that aside because it doesn’t matter, as a late 30’s adult, this album is fucking great and the band is aging, whether the fanbase likes it or not. There is so much creativity in it and I feel like while they play like they don’t care whether anyone comes along with them or not, they actually really sincerely hope we all do - and I also hope we all really do come along with them because I am coming along with them. None of this “play Antichrist” bullshit - leave the past in the past. Play Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied. They just cancelled their 2021 tour plans due to Covid which was a really good move, and confirmed a new album in the works, and I can’t wait to hear what they have coming.

The Midnight - Monsters (July 2020)

One of the most exciting releases last year, I was amped for the drop and was anticipating another solid, top-notch contemporary synthwave album from who I regard to be one of the very best in the genre. They’d released America Online some months prior which I really loved but it didn’t really indicate what the album was going to be like. Monsters ended up being waaaaay better than I expected - and I expected it to be really great. I don’t know whether it was a conscious decision by the band that perhaps the synthwave space was perhaps wearing out the 80’s a little bit - even pop-music was starting to take nibbles at the genre albeit pretty poorly by comparison, not that radio-punters would know it. With the new album tho, we’re taken into this wonderful in-between of not fully 90’s but not wholly 80’s either and even some contemporary r’n’b thrown in there but always stellar production and it’s just a massive album. It’s like a film you watch that ends up being an instant favourite you wish you could watch again for the first time because that first experience was so great. EVERYTHING lands perfectly in this album… with perhaps the exception of the lyric

“friends become lovers under covers”

in the song Prom Night because celebrating teens being sexually active is probably not something I cherish too much but hey, whaddayagonnado some things are just facts LET’S TURN THIS INTO A TEACHING OPPORTUNITY ABOUT CONSENT let’s not at least not right now.

Jeremy Blake - Object Permanence (December 2019)

Jeremy Blake is also known as Red Means Recording and he is a Synthlord. He has a YouTube channel and I am a superfan of his, so much so that I wrote a feature about him right here in this journal. I have a lot of his albums and Object Permanence is one of my favourites.

Jeremy is the definition of good faith. Everything he does is done with the intention of creating goodness in this world, in whatever way it can, somehow. Whether it’s just by listening to something that you might find pleasing, or whether it’s watching a video intended to help you create music on a piece of hardware or learn about software or licensing or platforms, distribution or business in some way. I happen to really dig the kinds of music styles he’s into as we seem to have had similar roots when it comes to some of the rock and electronic music we grew up on and have been into in our music lives, so the music he makes now really gels well with me. It was super difficult to choose between the album he released before this called Soft Music To Do Nothing To and Object Permanence but ultimately I think this is the right choice as far as an exhibition of his talent goes. Soft Music is still great, it’s more of a long jam he performed with only three pieces of gear which is pretty amazing and I listen to it all the time, but Object Permanence has some distinct tracks in varying styles I really get into.

I highly recommend Jeremy’s YouTube channel as an entry-point into his style, but if you’re a synth-head and like beats, breaks and groovy bleeps and bloops, you definitely won’t go astray by dropping into any one of his albums on Bandcamp.

The Paper Kites - On The Corner Where You Live (September 2018)

File The Paper Kites under “holy shit another Australian artist that isn’t rubbish” and from Melbourne, my hometown at that. In 2018, they split their new tracks effectively into two albums which works really well. The first is called On The Train Ride Home which is wholly downtempo and almost entirely acoustic with no drums, the second is this album and is a more energetic. I don’t actually prefer one over the other and have just made myself a playlist with contributions from other artists that only includes songs from On The Train Ride Home, but for this list I chose the second album for its exhibition of the band’s overall breadth of song-writing, performance and production. I guess I associate this sound with bands like Rogue Valley and other north and Pacific Northwest bands in the US but to be fair, I don’t really go hunting for this kind of sound - Nashville?? I don’t associate this very cooled-down acoustic-electric sound with Nashville, it’s not very Country (I have some Country in my collection which probably doesn’t surprise you), it’s almost like ultra-chilled mid-90’s ballad in a sense. Someone will have to tell me what it really is and where to find more but only of this calibre because I’m picky about quality. Google says they’re “folk music, folk rock, indie rock, alternative/indie” and that’s useless so throw that in the bin where it belongs.

This sound is definitely a mood. I hunted thru my entire collection including the aforementioned Rogue Valley and started a first playlist of just this kind of thing. I have the acoustic list done and will do an electric counterpart that will include more material from this album, as well as the one song I bought from Night Traveler called Don’t Forget Me as long as it’s not too energetic, it all depends on what makes it to the final list. This music speaks of drives thru rural landscapes, late nights in the city, time alone or with just one other person, closeness, loneliness, introspection, of long journeys and separation.

Iversen - La Favière (August 2018)

The story of how I got this album is hilarious - one of my gaming friends who buys stuff on Humble Bundle and itch.io and god knows what else tweets me this link and says “hey there’s this synthwave bundle for like $2 you should get it it’s $2 it has all this music in” and as someone who won’t buy bad music for even $2, I go investigating and you can listen to some samples and lo-and-behold, most of it is pretty great. I paid a lot more than $2 as that only got you 4 albums and for another $5 or something, you got another 4 albums plus I always pay more because I want more revenue to go to the contributing artists. I ended up not liking about half of the music on offer but in the bundle I discovered Lost Outrider, Morgan Willis and Iversen, all of which I’ve gone on to buy more music from on Bandcamp. As for La Favière, I bought it again on Bandcamp because I love the album so much and wanted to support the artist - it’s really excellent. Oddly tho, two of the best tracks from it were bonuses that only came with the bundle version and not the Bandcamp version, called Sunset Rider and Visions of Blue, so if you want those, I’m not entirely sure how you can get a hold of them - I’m sure if you contact Josh Iverson and tell him you want to pay for them, he’ll try to sort you out unless there are labels involved in which case, not his fault. Regardless, you still get one of the best chilled synth tracks of all time In Dreams which is worth the price of admission all on its own, it is absolutely epic and you should give it a listen.

Goodbye 2020

Time of writing is Sunday 16th January and what a ride it’s been already, hey. I might still write up my actual Albums Of The Year given two of them didn’t get mentioned - Reid Willis - Mother Of and Gidge - New Light, so I cheated a bit, but they’re my nominations, awards and lists so I can do whatever I like. I’m always excited about music, both listening with a critical ear and also emotionally engaging with it. There’s never a shortage of good new music or discovering material I hadn’t from years past. Sometimes it feels like wading thru endless fields of dross to find the gold but it’s always there and getting to it is a true delight.

There were honourable mentions and I couldn’t quite get the list to 10 - there are 8. I might write them up but for the moment, here they are in vague order of vagueness. Importance? Order of purchase? I got into Lapalux and Enter Shikari very late in the year. Apparat’s - LP5 is a very special album to me, almost Dreams Are Not Enough special. I do want to talk about how Jacob Collier’s album is both very very good and also not good enough.

The majority of the music listed here can be purchased on Bandcamp. There are links to most of it on my Bandcamp profile if you want to go hunting - I might add lazylinks later-on if I get the time.

Here is my last.fm full listing for 2020 if you’re curious about that kind of thing. Stats are great.

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startaryat · 4 years ago

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So, I just finished Cyberpunk 2077.

A lot of folks are riffing on this game because of the bugs, so I may as well get that out of the way. Yes, there are bugs. Yes, they are frustrating. Yes, I've had to reload once or twice because of one. Finally, yes, there were some quests I was unable to finish because of them. In the end, it reminded me of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. You know what people don't talk about from VtM: B? The bugs. They'll get a passing mention, but more people go on to talk about how the game's story riveted them... So... The story... Cyberpunk 2077 made me realize something rather harsh about the Cyberpunk genre as a whole: It is VERY racist against the Japanese. The core of the genre was built when the Japanese looked like an economic powerhouse. The TV Trope for it is called "Japan Takes Over the World." In the late 70s, throughout the 80s and early 90s, it really looked like Japan was going to buy everything. Despite that not looking like the case anymore, the fear people had of a world like that, that global society would be forcefully regressed to having to endure the society of Edo Period for some strange reason, inundates every facet of the Cyberpunk genre. You can see it in Cyberpunk 2020, the tabletop RPG 2077 is based on. You can see it in the game's contemporaries, like Shadowrun. You can see it in the writing of William Gibson, such as Johnny Mnemonic, and even hints of it crop up in The Matrix or Strange Days. Cyberpunk 2077 hits you with it full-force, as one of the major factions is a Megacorporation that, according to the game's backstory, has largely taken over the world and is very, VERY Japanese, replete with their founder being a WW2 veteran with a chip on his shoulder about the Nuclear Bombs and likes to wear traditional Japanese clothing, adhere to Japanese traditions and looks down his nose at everybody who isn't Japanese. *sigh*. You wind up having to deal with his bodyguard some and he's constantly complaining about people's lack of honor or that the food sucks and how much he wishes he was back in Japan, where people are civilized... Never mind that's not how Japan was at the time the genre got its feet under it... Never mind that's not how Japan is now... But I digress. The first bulk of the game is the sidequests. There are all sorts of random fights you can get into, sometimes even saving the random passersby. The city's police wire you bounties for the thugs you kill and bonuses for resolving the issues ("resolving" here meaning "Loot the bag everybody was fighting over."). Some also involve a little more searching to find out where the rest of the loot is. Read the little notes you pick up while doing these, and they help paint the picture of what you just interrupted. Sometimes you're stopping a mugging, sometimes you arrive just after one. Sometimes you're avenging a labor union that just got slaughtered, sometimes you're diving into a nearby harbor to pull the loot from a van the bad guys accidentally remote-controlled over the side of the pier. The second bulk of the game is the contracts and gigs, stuff your fixers (people who find you work) hire you to do. These are dotted all over the map like the random fights. These missions are often just more hardcore versions of the sidequests, but a few stand out for encouraging better tactical and strategic thinking. Usually, these will exercise your stealth skills, or your out-of-the-box thinking (such as liberally exploiting your ability to hack the nearby electronics). Most, though, have a much more decent story attached to them. A few stand out in my memory... One, you have to get a recording from a location. The people who have it are editing it, and others, into essentially a high-tech snuff film. Worse, it's a father-son operation doing this, and the more you dig into what's going on, the more horrifying the situation. I normally don't inflict violence on these digital sprites when I'm playing these games, but this time I could tell the old man was clearly stalling for time... So I shot him. Reading the note I picked up off of him... I have no regrets. Dude contracts a gang to protect him while he edits recordings and distribute the product. Said gang is a group of people so heavily mechanized, you can barely tell where the body ends and the machine begins. The note is a recorded conversation between him and one of the gang's leaders, with the gangleader being thoroughly disgusted with the old man's behavior. Somebody who WANTED to be inhuman was disturbed by this guy's inhumanity. Chilling. Finally, the game's main stories provide some of the more interesting moments in the game, but then, they should. Like most games, the main story is where the most effort has gone. Some of the most fun I have is working with the nomads, helping one get her stuff back (and some revenge on the guy who took it from her), rescuing their leader from a rival gang, even pulling a heist and driving a hover tank. The other main quests involve getting revenge for a killed contact on behalf of one of her friends and trying to clear the air about the botched job that kicks the whole game off, with each one having its own share of difficult choices and a staggering reminder of the consequences of engaging in such actions. It's stuff that can actually make you stop and think. There are a couple odd "social" missions that are mostly you talking to some of the people. The two I found were a doomsayer out near the first Ripperdoc the game introduces you to ("Ripperdoc" read: surgeon who installs your cybernetic upgrades, like a blend of cosmetic surgeon, physician and mechanic) and a talking vending machine that's a little too smart for its own good. The doomsayer is an interesting interpretation of such a character, with him eventually pointing out that one of his implants has been picking up transmissions, leaving you to infer that he has trouble parsing the information he's getting, so he rants it out to people in what seems like conspiracy theory nonsense. However, he does send you somewhere to deal with one of the things he's heard... And you find he's not entirely bonkers... The talking vending machine, on the other hand, is probably a statement on where talk bots and data collection algorithms are going to lead future advertising, and it's creepy and unusually heartwarming. |And all the while you've got Keanu Reeves talking in your ear, his low tone reminding you of Johnny Mnemonic, his clothing a dark reprise of Ted Logan, his cybernetic arm a reminder of Neo... Though his pistol handling in the segments where you play through his memories would probably make John Wick shake his head in irritation. Seriously, could anybody ELSE have played this character? This was absolutely perfect casting, and Reeves does an excellent job of playing this rocker-turned-mercenary-turned-revolutionary-turned-digital ghost. All in all, it's a fun game. It's not a massive, revolutionary thing, no, but I enjoyed it all the same. It had its moments, like Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines did, like Fallout 3 did, like Fallout New Vegas did, like a lot of our favorites do, and like any good piece of media does. It's not perfect, but I had fun.

#Cyberpunk2077

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earlywrites · 7 years ago

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there’s no place like 127.0.0.1 commentary part I: ‘looking back’

Hey gang! Here’s part one of my commentary on my Angela & Robot fic there's no place like 127.0.0.1, a.k.a. A Weekend At Angela’s, a.k.a. Mr. Robot’s Day(s) Off. This will contain spoilers through Season 3 of Mr. Robot.

To start off, the title of the fic itself I got from a fun piece of set dressing in 3x05:

...which (and I'm probably stating the obvious here, but either way) is a play on 'there's no place like home' from the Wizard of Oz, as 127.0.0.1 is the 'localhost' of any given machine.

“Dolores… Haze?” she says, frowning [...]

I believe this is the codename Elliot would have Darlene stored under on his phone, since it’s a handle she’s used in other areas -- recently, as the name of the network she and Elliot used in the arcade during 3x09:

Somehow, he both feels like he’s been hit over the head with a truck, yet at the same time had the best sleep he’s ever experienced in the scattering of days where he’s been the one in charge. The sleeping pills on the side table aren’t a name he recognizes, and the instructional lettering is all in Chinese, but holy balls did they knock him the fuck out. Seems Angela wasn’t kidding when she said she was committed to keeping Elliot out at all costs.

I did a bunch of reading on DID and several people on the forums suggested sleeping pills as a method to prevent alters from switching over in one's sleep. Ambien and melatonin etc all seemed to also promote sleepwalking as a side effect, especially when combined with alcohol (and this is more relevant in part II), so I took artistic licence and made a fake drug that essentially knocks you out with zero (known) side effects, lol.

Residual self-image. Everyone has a face that only they can see, projected outwards into the mirror. A false idol of confidence, of ego, or a shell of dysmorphia and despair – either way, a lie repeated for so long it manifests into your own monster. Or maybe it’s something as little as a smaller nose or a slimmer waistline, look, ultimately, people like to reject reality and see what they want to see – for better or worse, ‘til death do us part, until every feature is stripped back and washed away, and that face in the mirror is just a skull the world has finally fucked. Technically, his own projection is long dead, but reanimated for a greater purpose – a divine one, even, according to Tyrell and his whole wackjob microreligion thing he’s got going on.

Residual self-image is indeed a term from The Matrix, which Morpheus describes as the 'mental projection of your digital self'. Here, it's a literal way that Robot describes how he and other people see themselves, even if in reality it can be very different. The major theme of this fic was perception versus reality, in that both Robot and Angela are focussed so narrowly on their specific ideal outcomes of Stage 2 that they omit or ignore any signs that the plan will not go exactly their way. This is the first area where I start to address that, and basically continue to hold up a sign in big black lettering that goes HEY ISN'T THIS IRONIC THAT THEY'RE SAYING THIS GIVEN WHAT WE KNOW NOW for the rest of the fic.

Still, he only gets wrapped up in this metaphysical bullshit when he’s in the driver’s seat for an extended period of time, because situations tend to arise that take him on a stroll through Uncanny Valley. For example: he showers and then shaves, but no stubble leaves his jawline. He changes into fresh clothes that Angela has left him, but the label on his jacket still proudly proclaims Mr. Robot: Computer Repair with a Smile! (still not his name, no matter how much Elliot tries to pin it to him). Sometimes he can squint through the mirror, rearrange his focus a little bit, and see this analogue of Elliot staring back at him – eyes half-lidded, the pinched anxiety on his face smoothed out. This is what they all see, which really is a poor substitute for the damn good-looking guy he’s facing off with in the bathroom vanity this morning.

Like, I've always wondered about this. Elliot is always clean-shaven after Robot's been in control for longer stretches of time, so Robot must shave, but we know he always has stubble -- how does any of this work, really? Is the fact that we see Robot's face in the mirror just a product of Elliot's overarching control over what is depicted in the show, and Robot actually sees 'Elliot's face? Who the heck knows, Sam sure as hell probably isn't going to explain it, so I'm sticking to this interpretation for now. And, also, no, Robot's never actually referred to himself as Mr. Robot in the show, going so far as to laugh at the idea of Elliot calling him that name when Krista brings it up in 3x02, which is why I have him rejecting it in here.

He tries watching TV, for a bit, but nothing particularly engaging is on basic cable on a Saturday morning – crappy cartoons (they really don’t make them like they used to), some more bullshit presidential candidate Donald Trump (seriously. This, if anything, is why Stage Two is an absolute fucking necessity to get the world back on track) has regurgitated about taxes or something is being picked apart by no less than twelve ‘experts’ on CNN, and the hysteria continues on four other channels. Only one news channel is actually covering the upcoming UN vote, which is quintessential Americocentrism - like, holy shit, the UN is going to sell a fucking country to China, and all people give a shit about is some failed reality star who can't, apparently, do math beyond a grade-school level. The next channel he tries is airing a repeat episode of Teen Mom, which is about the point where he gives up and switches it off, tossing the remote somewhere down the couch.

I don't know what was on US basic cable on that September weekend in 2015, and neither do you, probably. I do know that, around this time, Trump unveiled his tax policy at a press conference. It wasn't on a Friday/Saturday, but then again, September 29th wasn't actually a Monday, so whatever, I'll take some wiggle room on that.

[...] Darlene doesn’t know about the arrangement between Angela and himself, all he needs is plausible deniability for the knock – sleeping pills on the side table, that’s it, that’s the play, if he bunks down on the couch she’ll believe he was so far under he didn’t hear any of it. Wake up, fidget a bit, Elliot-style – keep it vague, let her fill in the blanks—

I would've loved to have seen the Robot v Darlene route, where Robot plays as Elliot and finds out about Elliot's plan to have him followed, and how things might have played out differently from there, but, that would then diverge from the canon series of events I was trying to keep within. I guess we'll never know!

“I know, that’s why I set up a contingency, give me some fucking credit here,” he argues. “It’s a little self-destructive sequence, a ransomware mimic – forget to key the password into the dialog box that pops up every five minutes and you’ll get locked out, and all the files on this laptop will self-encrypt. Only I have the keys, so even if – if – he manages to resurface, he wouldn’t get far.”

I'm sure this is wildly inaccurate, since I know pretty much nothing about programming, lol. We can't all be Elliot, okay!!!

“Is it possible for you to not be an asshole for like, five minutes?” Angela mutters. “Fine. I’ll—wait, hold on.” She brings up the Netflix home page, typing [email protected] into the email field. “Let’s see if he – nope, hasn’t changed it. Why am I not surprised.”

“This is your ex-boyfriend’s account,” he clarifies. Angela hums the affirmative as she scrolls through his recommended titles – fucking hell, there’s at least three different Adam Sandler flicks alone. “Well, good to know he’s still a fucking moron. You sure dodged a bullet there. Or,” he pivots, reconsidering the context, “I suppose, given how that all played out, got that bullet lodged in you removed before it was too late.”

Fuck Ollie, this is the least of what you deserve, you dickwagon. I had a further scene that I ended up cutting because it dragged down the pacing, where Robot convinced Angela to let him 'hijack' Ollie's Netflix account by changing the email address and password and then getting into his email account to verify the change and delete the notification emails. Anyway, he's probably suffering in the post-5/9 economy, so, suck it dude.

He wrinkles his nose. “Oh, that guy’s in this?”

“Who, Christian Slater?” Angela says, looking up over her phone as the monologue continues. She finishes her text and slides it back onto the coffee table. “Not a fan?”

“Of his works? No, I like them well enough, Heathers is great,” he says, tossing a piece of popcorn in the air. “There’s just something about his face that makes me hate him. You know, when you look at a guy, and he has a face that’s just asking for a fist? This guy. He always looks so smug.” He points an accusatory finger at the TV. “What have you got to be so smug about, huh? Besides the fact that you’re probably jerking off to that fat royalty check in the mail every month. I mean, we all know that’s what all the Hollywood schmucks are doing, tugging it to their stacks of cash, but you don’t have to wear it right there on your face so I’m reminded of the fact every time I see it. And it doesn’t help that he spends half the movie miming the act, it just makes it so stupidly meta, Christ, I need to build a fourth wall in my brain and kick over a bucket of bleach – also, by the way, what the fuck, I can’t believe you actually watched this as a child, you—”

This was probably the most self-indulgent thing I got to write. I love that Christian Slater exists in Robotverse, so that I can exercise the 'character played by actor, who also played a character in another thing, thinks this character sucks/is ugly' trope. If you missed it, here's Pump Up The Volume on VHS in Angela's childhood home in 3x06:

She’s silent, for a moment, and the movie plays on. “It helped, in a way. With my mom. There’s a line, that’s always stuck with me – ‘the terrible secret is that being young is sometimes less fun than being dead.’ See, they don’t approach death in a way that’s nice, and polite, and full of platitudes – it’s angry, and messy, and it’s okay to want to just—” She suddenly leans over to the laptop, clicking forwards a few times.

“I’m sick of being ashamed. I don't mind being dejected and rejected, but I'm not going to be ashamed about it.” She mouths along with him. “I mean, you look around, and you see nothing is real, but at least the pain is real. You know, even this show isn’t real? It’s just me, I’m using a voice disguiser, I’m a phony fuck just like my dad, just like anybody—”

If you haven't seen the movie, basically Slater's character is reacting to the news of a teen committing suicide, after they had stated the intention to do so on his show - you can watch this scene here. This is, of course, not a movie a young child should watch, but Angela has always talked about her anger regarding her mother's death, and I thought (aside from the self-indulgent aspect of Robot v Slater, lol) it would be interesting to explore how she might act out, a little, like kids sometimes do to cope with grief and pain, secretly watch a Movie Definitely Not For Kids, and within it find a helpful way to release the anger she bottled up. (Also -- she would've loved the lizard. What a cute little friend.)

Somehow, they keep this train chugging along until well into the night. His pick is next – he chooses Snakes On A Plane, just to fuck with her a bit, but it turns out she just loves snakes, because of course she does, so that backfired somewhat, aside from the fact that Snakes On A Plane is actually pretty fun if you really embrace the hammy acting and ridiculous plot. Angela parries, picking a recent release called Jupiter Ascending, a large proportion of which he spends loudly trying to work out at what point in time since The Matrix Trilogy were the Wachowskis secretly killed and replaced by doppelgänger hacks, as Angela sips her appletini and coos over werewolf-angel(?)-in-rollerskates Channing Tatum. He then counters with Sharknado 3, which is definitely a mistake, and then they have to both suffer through all excruciating ninety-five minutes of it because neither of them are willing to budge on their unspoken cinematic war. A victory for him, maybe, but a Pyrrhic one nonetheless.

Angela does canonically love snakes, so this wasn't intended to be a jab at her manipulation of Elliot this season, but, of course, interpret at as you will. This great piece of characterisation is from the Red Wheelbarrow tie-in book for Season 2 (which is an awesome read, definitely recommend):

Second, the 'cinematic war' is totally one-sided. In my mind, Angela actually enjoyed all the films they watched, while Robot basically fucked himself, lol. Look, Jupiter Ascending is a wonderful, whimsical film, that should be taken at face value for the work of art that it is. Space paperwork! Bee princesses! Eddie Redmayne whisper-screaming as he tries to marry his mother! It's an absolute cinematic treasure. I can't say the same for Sharknado 3, but, well, all in good fun.

“First off, the entire concept of monogamy is bullshit,” he replies, and yes, he is going to actually give her a serious answer. “It’s an archaic evolutionary tactic to boost survival rates among Neanderthals that has no place being the gold standard in 2015, in the same way that we don’t kill a mammoth and spend the rest of the year eating hairy elephant ass for every meal — newsflash, supermarkets exist now, there are like fifty different varieties of beans, literally just beans, so it makes zero sense to pledge your undying commitment to a can of Spam, I mean, shit, even if it’s something you actually enjoy, you’d get absolutely sick and tired of eating it and nothing else until you keel over and die. So, on that note, it’s pretty obvious why most of our parents spend the rest of their lives fucking hating each other if they’re not a part of the fifty percent who cut ties before it’s too late, because, yes, alongside the great lie of the picture perfect nuclear family, the modern factory-line industry of marriage is just a capitalist cash cow where everybody thinks they’re getting milk, but in reality? That sure ain’t a teat they’re sucking on.”

This also comes back to the Red Wheelbarrow tie-in book, and specifically, to this scene in it, where Robot rants to Leon about monogamy in the context of Mad About You:

This is probably my favourite scene from the book -- I love the idea of Leon and Robot having long-winded debates on media, and it's a pity we'll never get to see that acted out, lol.

[...] “Fuck Gosling, fuck Stone, kill Groban. Done.”

“Wow,” Angela replies, leaning back, one hand against her heart. “Wow. You’re such a dick. How can you kill Josh Groban?”

“Breaking news! What a scoop. Angela Moss, come and claim your Pulitzer,” he says. “And, to answer your question: very easily. Groban is clearly the least attractive of the three, and so by the metric of this game it condemns him to death.”

“The correct answer,” she says firmly, barreling over him as if he’d never spoken, “Is fuck Ryan, marry Josh, and, well, if I have to kill someone, I guess I have to kill Emma, but I’m sure she’s lovely. Actually, no, okay, if you get two fucks then I do to. Fuck Ryan, fuck Emma, marry Josh.”

I love Angela's love for Josh Groban nearly as much as getting to see Elliot in that 'Property of Josh Groban' sweater in 3x01. It's never been explicitly stated on the show, but my interpretation of Angela and Robot's sexualities is that they're both bi as fuck, so there you go.

“And, you know what? I don’t want to live in a world where everyone’s as cynical and jaded as you, old man. Because,” she hiccups, ending it in a giggle, “That’s what you sound like, you grumpy fuck, like you’re pushing eighty, not long until you start yelling at kids—” and at this, she cups her hands over her mouth, imitating a megaphone, “Get off my lawn, you capitalist piglets!”

“Okay,” he says, shaking his head, grinning in spite of himself as she yells out “you bourgeoisie microscum!” in a shitty imitation of an elderly man [...]

This is my favourite piece of dialogue in this entire thing. 'Bourgeoisie microscum' fucking kills me every time I read it. Originally I also had 'pushing fifty' as a sly wink at Christian Slater's real age, but no middle aged man has quite the curmudgeonly attitude to pull off 'bourgeoisie microscum'.

That's it for part one, folks! Thanks for reading, if indeed you still are. Click here for part II :D

#earlyfic #dvdcommentary #TNPLH #mr robot fic

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metalempire · 8 years ago

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so using the digimon picker i was able to find my top 20 favourite digimon it seems. the list itself reads right to left and goes in descending order, so i’m going to list them off in ascending order and give reasons as to why they got on the list it seems. a noticable trend on this list is dark themed, red coloured or metallic digimon.

20. scorpmon

it’s no surprise i like appmon and i do like that scorpmon harkens back to digimon designs by being edgy and having guns, plus he’s purple.i like the cameramon line so far and i liked the fight he had with dogatchmon.

19. infernmon

one of my more favourite perfect level designs, i like that his mouth has a gun hidden in it and i loved how it was in our war games. honestly its got that kind of uncanny look on its face that makes it look both evil and cunning yet not hostile. its just a design i really appreciate, plus it looks cute when it tucks its limbs in,

18. dogatchmon

i like gatchmon and navimon, so combining their designs makes something i like. no brainer really. he gets alot of good fight scenes and whatnot in appmon and honestly he looks pretty sleek yet compact. not too much to say here he’s a more basic design in appmon i appreciate for not being too silly or edgy.

17. omegamon alter-b

out of all his numerous forms, this is the omegamon im most attached to, specifically because of next-0rder. i like the idea of swapping the weapons and imbuing it with darkness and letting it run wild, as well as being an alter evolution, it just looks really cool and was a great fight in the game as well. plus its just got a cool name.

16. millenniumon

i always thought its previous form as kimairamon was a clusterfuck of colours, yet had potential as a design. so dampening those colours to darker greys, blacks and a little blue accented with that yellow and blue aura with those sick mugen cannons on it help bring the design together really, plus it looks thinner and meaner than its perfect form.

15. leviamon

my favourite demon lord. i like marine life that can kill you and has teeth. plus im a very envious person, so this thing stuck with me, especially since he’s the most different looking out of the demon lords. i just like the idea of a giant crocodile being the second most powerful among the demon lords with a mouth big enough to rip a building in half if he wanted to. plus having two tails is cute.

14. chaosdukemon

honestly the uses of dull purples, blues and a shade of grey thats not quite black and not steel coloured either makes a very subtly impressive design, one that would convey dread over terror. im particularly fond of how its shield looks to be honest.

13. herakleskabuterimon

the only one who doesnt quite fit the theme of this list too well. huh. either way i think the tentomon line is a decent one only upstaged by a few others in adventure as it goes, yet ends up being my favourite ultimate from tri when all the kids get ultimate evolutions. i do like how it has a few nods to kuwagamon and has enough going on yet stays simple by using a mostly one colour. it looks powerful without trying too hard and i feel like i can respect this thing.

12. megidramon

i consider this to be guilmon’s true ultimate really and it does look quite terrifying. it has acidic saliva, hellfire themed design, elements of megalogrowlmon such as the arm blades and looks like a scary dragon rather than a dinosaur. i also like its lack of legs for some reason. when i imagine the digital hazard this thing first comes to mind, because it looks like a menace to any digimon really. its a woefully underused design and one that sticks with me to this day as something that really stood out in tamers.

11. megaseadramon

seadramon’s design was simple but not memorable really. megaseadramon has a much more effective design, using colours that mesh better, i like that its hair looks like algae and i like the metal twisted horn that shoots lightning, hearkening back to betamon. i also find it kind of cute, its slender and looks like it’d probably kill you on sight and i kind of like its demented eyes.

10. diablomon

yaoi hands. i like how diabolical this thing looks, it has wild eyes, a villain’s hairstyle and a nice way of walking that reminds you its kind of a bug but not really. those long arms that just whip around to slap you just add to it really when paired with its comparatively little legs. again our war games plays into how much i like this thing, since it was fast, cunning and powerful. quite alot for whats essentially the personification of the y2k bug.

9. globemon

red google daddy. fuck me this is the first appmon design i’d probably fuck. just look at him, sleek, tall, strong shiny. he moves in a very exaggerated fashion and is so laughably overpowered in concept that he can basically attack the entire earth with one move. i like the use of lasers and lights in his design and that he replaces most of the white and green from dogatchmon with timemon��s bright gold to look kind of regal yet commanding.

8. alphamon

best waifu. something about them hips man.... anyway, alphamon is probably op as shit for being able to rewind time and blast apart dexdorughoramon with one attack, as well as having a sword made of light and whatever the fuck an ouryuken is. its got a wide arsenal and pulls off a great black knight look, i like that its the leader of the royal knights who’s never actually there, just existing to control them if need be. x-evolution and cyber sleuth really helped endear me to alphamon, its so cool and smooth looking.

7. hagurumon

the only child level on this list, hagurumon is adorable. its essentially thee gears sellotaped together with a crooked smile. it also has one eye thats covered by a circle and one eye with a spiky circle for variety. its just so cute, it fits exactly into what i find adorable, the way it moves, the way it smiles, the industrial look it has. it’s got a place in my heart as my favourite child level for just being unconventially adorable.

6. chaosdramon

considering it’s the evolution to another digimon on this list, it wins a spot by virtue of sharing a similar design, yet adapting it. its got eyes now and even though its black skin is actually cyber in some ways, looking some cool matrix shit, it makes it look more like a dragon/dinosaur wearing red digizoit armour. i do like how it has the same weapons as its prior stage, yet they do look noticeably different, i like the return to the classic dreadnought cannons that slowly snap forward and fire one colossal blast. the whole thing looks ready to go and kill.

5. megadramon

arguably my favourite perfect level, megadramon has a classical design to me. its got that cyborg reptile thing going on that i love, its got a little tattoos, tattered wings, a metal helmet and those two missile launchers for hands. it looks ferocious and there’s enough going there to look at plus its one of the rarer instances where colours that clash a bit look kind of fitting for me. i’d like t imagine it curled up asleep sometime.

4. lordknightmon

pink’s a good colour, knights are good. lordknightmon is therefore good. i love this thing as a character, someone who will do anything if the ends justify the means, so much untapped potential for conflict with the royal knights and with itself. its good villain, but also a food hero, plus its flashy and vain, which i find entertaining. i like the elegant design alot and the fact its pink. sexy.

3. dukemon

i think everyone fell in love with dukemon the first time they saw it. it’s a timeless design, perfect uses of red and white. the weapons it has just look so good together, its body looks just right, its pretty much captivating in a way thats unique to the viewer yet always universal in that sense. i like its concept too, it tamed the digital hazard and instead used its power to protect the digital world as a holy knight instead of destroy it, even its personal justice seems to be that ones deeds determine your fate and that life is always precious. i also like that its a bit of a rebel among the royal knights once it starts thinking. be real, we’d all marry dukemon.

2. metalseadramon

i like metal digimon, i like megaseadramon. combine the two and i’m signed up lads. in a way, i find this thing really cute, hard to explain, not gonna bother. i also really like how its nose is now a giant laser cannon because it must have one hell of a sneeze. honestly though this thing is so majestic looking, its got the hair, the gold and silver metal design, the wires and pipes, all of it slenderly put together on a sleek serpent of the seas, its so beautiful in a way, a design that just comes together perfectly.

1. mugendramon

anyone who follows me is not surprised at all that this is my favourite. i adore this thing. i love that its a combo of several perfect level digimon’s cyborg parts meshed together into one incredible machine of death and destruction. honestly i consider it the best designed digimon of all time. there’s so much going on but its not a clusterfuck, everything links together so well, you can really tell its machine digimon made to be the best of the best, taking so much that worked before and amplifying it. i like cyborgs and i like robots, so this thing hits all the notes for me while still trying to look like a monster, like a mechanical chimera that looks like it fits, like all the parts were meant to be put together to assemble this glorious machine. i love its wide variety of weapons and attacks, and that its essentially a digimon who runs on malice, that it petty much exists just to fuck up everything in sight. i’ll never forget the one analogman used at the end of digimon world 1 and i love the idea that it as the first ultimate, that because of this thing so many digimon rapidly began to change and try to reach its level of power. this thing definites the level its at, that all digimon going from perfect to ultimate should use this thing as a goal of sorts, to reach its sheer level of power. and its withstood the test of time, with so many digimon at the ultimate level being so strong in their own ways, this thing can still go toe to toe with the best of them. its a raw classic that just cant be beaten in my eyes, its always going to be my favourite really. i love it.

#Digimon #long post

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preciousmetals0 · 5 years ago

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Economy Grapples; Targeting Apples; New Great Stuff Pick!

Economy Grapples; Targeting Apples; New Great Stuff Pick!:

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

When are you gonna come down? When are you going to land?

Filings for initial jobless claims jumped by 4.4 million last week, the U.S. Department of Labor reported today … and the market rallied.

No, this isn’t déjà vu. This isn’t a glitch in the Matrix … no matter how much we wish it was.

It gets worse. During the past five weeks, the U.S. economy saw 26.4 million people file for unemployment benefits. In other words, we’ve lost all the jobs created since the Great Recession of 2008 … and the market rallied.

According to Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, the latest jobless claims data could translate to an unemployment rate of 23% when the Department of Labor releases its official jobs data next week.

The previous peak for U.S. unemployment was 24.9% during the Great Depression.

So, with that horrendous backdrop, why is Wall Street in rally mode today?

One word: Oil.

For the second day in a row, the U.S. June oil futures contract soared, climbing more than 25% to trade firmly above $17 per barrel. International oil prices topped $20 per barrel.

Traders are betting on U.S. oil production cuts and rising tensions in the Middle East. President Trump provided the latter with yesterday’s threat to “destroy” Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf. As for U.S. production cuts … well, with U.S. shale oil companies on the verge of bankruptcy, this one’s a no-brainer.

The Takeaway:

On days like today, I feel like I should have stayed on the farm. I should have listened to my old man.

Practically every economic indicator points toward the worst U.S. economy since the Great Depression, and yet, Wall Street rallied. It’s bizarro world.

The problem here is that we are investors. We rely on accurate data to make decisions. Right now, that data says to duck and cover.

But, if you completely duck and cover, you miss out on potential gains in this irrational market at best. And, at worst, you lose money by betting against the market.

Here at Great Stuff, we’re convinced that the market has not seen the bottom. But you can be right and still lose money. Remember, markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

So, while you hold most of your capital in safe havens like gold, currencies and bonds, it might be worthwhile to throw a bit of cash toward the market’s insanity.

(And I realize that by tilting a little bullish, I may have just called a top to the recent rally. Ha!)

But to do this, you need to do it safely. One of Great Stuff’s major themes this year has been finding your guide.

I cannot stress this enough: The market is far from normal right now.

Going out on your own is dangerous.

You need someone to point you in the right direction, especially when looking for positive returns in the current market madness.

That’s why it pays to listen to Banyan Hill experts like Jeff Yastine — those investors and researchers who have been there, done that when it comes to bizarre, out-of-touch markets.

When sifting through Wall Street’s noise, Jeff relies on a simple formula that lets him see through the financial smoke and mirrors to predict which stocks have the true potential to soar.

Not to mention, this formula helped Jeff show his readers’ cumulative gains of 1,091% in the past five years alone. And that’s the kind of guide you want to stick with through this topsy-turvy tumult.

You know you want to learn more about this formula, so what are you waiting for? Click here now.

Good: Stay on Target

Sometimes, your best just isn’t good enough. That’s quickly becoming a common theme for corporations this year, especially in retail.

This morning, Target Inc. (NYSE: TGT) reported that month-to-date comparable sales rose 5% in April. What’s more, quarter-to-date same-store sales are up 7%, while online sales skyrocketed 275% year over year.

Considering that U.S. retail sales plunged 8.7% in March, Target really hit the mark.

But Wall Street just wasn’t satisfied. Analysts pointed out that, while sales for essential goods are up by double digits, Target’s sales for high-margin goods, such as apparel and accessories, are down 40% for the quarter.

Furthermore, the brokerage bunch expects 8.9% same-store sales growth from Target — well above the company’s projected 7% growth.

In short, Target is performing rather well when you consider the U.S. economy’s pandemic lockdown. It’s just not enough to appease overzealous Wall Street analysts.

Better: Apple Gets an ARM Up

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) kicked Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) to the curb. According to a Bloomberg report, the long-anticipated ARM Mac chip could arrive as early as next year.

The company already moved toward ARM-based chips for iPhones and iPads, and performance has grown significantly in recent years. So much so, that Apple’s ARM chips now regularly beat Intel’s Mac chips in benchmark tests.

According to Bloomberg, Apple already has “at least one Mac” powered by Apple chips that’s ready to go in 2021. The new chips reportedly have at least 12 cores stacked up behind their processing power, putting Intel’s four-core Mac chips to shame.

(Quick fact: Put simply, the more cores a processor has, the more tasks the device can process at once.)

The Bloomberg report also notes that Apple tapped its favorite fabricator to make its new ARM Mac chips: Taiwan Semiconductor Co. (NYSE: TSM). So, not only is this news positive for Apple, it could help Taiwan Semi move a bit further away from reliance on Huawei Technologies Co. for revenue growth.

Sorry, Intel, but you’re out in the cold on this one.

Best: Great Stuff Picks!

It’s been a while since Great Stuff has come across a company that we believe in enough to recommend buying. Today, however, we have a winner.

Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) is the consummate work-from-home company.

The firm specializes in networking, virtual apps, virtual desktops and cloud-based collaboration and file sharing. If you’re among the millions working from home right now, chances are you use at least one piece of software or service from Citrix.

Because of the surge in at-home work, Citrix saw a blowout first quarter. Net income soared 82% year over year, with adjusted earnings beating the consensus estimate by $0.56 per share. Revenue spiked 20% to $861 million and beat Wall Street’s expectations.

Citrix even put full-year guidance above the Street’s target, and that strength is poised to continue. In its earnings release, Citrix said:

In response to our customers’ need to quickly support nearly all employees working from home, we created a more flexible, shorter duration offering in the form of a limited use on-premises term subscription at a discounted price. As a result, we saw considerable upside to ‘other subscription’ reported revenue.

In other words, the company adapted rapidly to soaring work-at-home demand, and it even priced subscription packages competitively. This competitive pricing will be key going forward.

Despite a move to reopen the economy in many states, the pandemic won’t let up anytime soon. Furthermore, many companies may decide that the work-from-home model is more cost effective once the shelter-in-place directives are lifted.

As such, Citrix should continue to see impressive revenue growth through the end of the year and through the first half of 2021.

The best part about CTXS shares right now? Wall Street investors sold-off on the news. The shares dropped more than 6% despite the company’s beat-and-raise quarter. This profit-taking is our opportunity.

The Bottom Line: Buy CTXS.

You yelled “Marco,” and now it’s “Polo” time!

This week, our inbox is nigh overflowing with all the greatness you all sent in. Today, we talk about returning vets, essential faith and retro-futuristic late ‘80s rock. Now, I’ll stop yapping and turn it over to you. Here’s what Great Stuff readers are thinking about this week:

What’s Essential at Heart

My store is considered essential so I’m still working. Plus I am PRN as a caregiver. When I’m not working, I’m in the YouVersion Bible app.

— Jennifer L.

Thank you for writing in, Jennifer! No matter how dire things may seem, remember that you and every other essential worker are what’s keeping this whole perilous house of cards from — well, best not to put that bad juju out there…

Regardless, thank you for what you do and the care you provide. Your email is a valid reminder for everyone out there: Whatever you do and however you do it, keep the faith. (Like wearing matador boots and a tight pair of chinos.) Losing a few portfolio percentage points has nothing on losing your sanity.

Futures Facts

You realize it was oil futures that were negative. — John A.

Yessir. Futures. Oil. Future oil. It’s top of the page in the article linked in Tuesday’s issue, copied here for posterity.

Did you know dogs and bees can smell fear? Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds? Did you know my neighbor has three rabbits? Did you know that underneath the Denver airport — OK, I’ll stop before we “disappear.”

Warren Pieces

Mr. zevons masterpiece work “transverse city” though made a long time ago so fits [our] dystopian present situation I can’t stop playing it… splendid isolation indeed.

— Chris S.

Not to mention, the absolute quality of that album’s cameos.

Jerry Garcia, David Gilmour, Neil Young and Chick Corea?! The late ‘80s were strange, strange times. Thank you for taking me back to them, Chris. If you’re looking for some tape to spool, some wax to spin or … tracks to stream, I guess, run straight down to check out Warren Zevon’s Transverse City.

Wet/Vet Newbies

Hello Joseph your insights and information are most welcome. I’m a “rookie” mini vet (whatever that means). I guess a wet newbie who took a long hiatus who is interested in knowing how progressively bad the economic news will affect the markets. I don’t expect a fortune teller but will appreciate your insights.

— Max G.

First off, thank you for tuning in, Max, and welcome back from your hiatus!

See, the best part about Great Stuff — well, speaking for ourselves here — is that we welcome rookies and vets alike. No matter how much you know or don’t know about the market, just know that Great Stuff has the know-how to demystify any market know-nothing shenanigans … you know?

Buy, Buy, Buy

What to buy now

— Lenore C.

Why, you picked a perfect time to write in, Lenore! Check out our write-up on CTXS above. (You didn’t scroll past it, now, did you? These are Great Stuff picks we’re talking about!)

I expect to see the same scenario play out with other companies this manic earnings season. So, keep a close, discerning eye out over the next month or so. I’ve harped on this for a while now, but every company you see reports from will face some kind of COVID-19 impact — it’s just a matter of how much damage.

It’s Wall Street’s overreaction or underreaction to said damage that unveils your bargain buys.

Nevertheless, do tread carefully, Lenore, Max and all you lurking vets and newbies out there! Today’s bizarre action is just a glimpse of the rough ride ahead through earnings season.

Of course, you don’t have to go it alone. Navigating the murky market waters is always best with a guide. Click here to find yours!

I want to give a huge “thanks!” to Jennifer, John, Chris, Max, Lenore and everyone else who wrote in! I

Have you written to us yet? No?! Feel free to speak your mind — drop us a line at [email protected].

That’s a wrap for today, but if you still crave more Great Stuff, check us out on social media: Facebook and Twitter.

Until next time, be Great!

Regards,

Joseph Hargett

Editor, Great Stuff

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goldira01 · 5 years ago

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