#will's media thoughts / virtual brain repository

[oddygaul]

Avatar: The Way of Water

You know, not that I have any particular faith that this series will make anything of it, but The Way of Water actually raises some interesting questions about the way consciousness and the transfer of self work in the Avatar universe.

My first watch, I treated Recom Quaritch as just an excuse to bring back the most charismatic antagonist the series had – that he was more or less the same one-dimensional character as before, with a quick handwave for how his return was possible. But they’re honestly doing more than that with his writing. This isn’t Quaritch back from the dead with a new lease on life; his “I am not that man” speech to Spider is not a shirking of responsibility, and his iconic skull crushing scene is not an uncaring show of stoicism. 

Recom Quaritch is terrified. 

When he sees Neytiri’s arrows, he is experiencing primal fear. When he sees Spider, left behind alone on an alien world, he regrets the callousness of his former self. He sees where Quaritch’s bravado led him, sees what the end result of his mistakes was, and decides to firmly reject that he’s the same person as the original. He has Quaritch’s memories in his mind, but he doesn’t feel they belong to him. When he crushes Quaritch’s skull, it represents a refusal to honor the man the RDA assumes him to be: Recom Quaritch is his own man, and he will make his own choices about his future.

I always appreciate it when sci-fi takes this approach towards ‘revival’ via a backed-up consciousness. A lot of my favorites explore its implications – the Culture books, for example, dive deep into the drawbacks of a backup-based system – but all too often, they’re glossed over and treated as a magical solution to death and danger.

I don’t care how thorough and precise your backup is, unless there’s some instantaneous, streaming consciousness-transferring device, if you die and your backup is placed in a new body, that is NOT you. Sure, to everyone else, it might as well be: as far as they can tell, you look and act the same as you always have. But YOU, your stream of consciousness, your awareness, the ongoing perception of the world that defines your life – that has ended, and no amount of backups can bring that back. It only makes sense that the revived’s sense of personhood might be drastically different.

It’s an interesting pivot, because the original Avatar sorta takes for granted the functionally seamless transfer of consciousness used in the Avatar system. Via the link unit, one’s mind can be ping-ponged back and forth between a human and Na’vi body as much as you want, in real-time, with only the sensation of waking up from a nap to show anything changed. Jake’s permanent transfer into his Na’vi body at the end works the same way, just using a big tree instead of the science tube: he simply closes his eyes as a human, and wakes up in his new body like nothing ever happened. The societal implications of this technology are staggering – people could functionally live forever by growing new bodies and instantly transferring over, for example – but it's used only as a plot contrivance.

That is to say, the first Avatar is fully disinterested in exploring the potential nuance of these ideas, and much more focused on really hammering home its comparisons between technology and the natural world; they want you to be thinking about the contrast between the Na’vi queues and the human link units, not some fiddly philosophical quandary. Still, now that The Way of Water has raised these questions, it would be cool if the future sequels – maybe the one set on Earth? – dig a little more into the horror inherent in recreating the minds of the dead.

Being in this headspace for this watch also made me realize how fucked it is to have an Avatar after the human it’s based on has died. In The Way of Water, we see Grace’s Avatar body, and it’s… well, it’s still there. It’s alive, submerged, and kicking… just with no mind inside, empty, a bespoke vessel made for one soul that just doesn’t exist anymore. Brutal.

—

Other thoughts:

The first Avatar relies on its adventure setpieces – Jake’s first bond with the ikran, the montages of running through Pandora by night – more than its action setpieces, which themselves are like, aight. Way of Water’s action, by contrast, legit kicks fucking ass start to finish. Consider:

-the slow-mo train derailing -the Metkayina ducking in and out of the water to avoid gunfire then leaping out to spear RDA chumps -the speedboats, crab mechs, and assault subs, all of which are infinitely more fun than Avatar’s clunky mechs, and the spectacular flips they do as they bounce across the surface of the ocean to explode on nearby rocks -the big whale doing straight-up Action Hero shit -Neytiri shooting a guy through another guy

Seriously, it’s killer. As someone that considers themselves fairly weary of fight scenes these days – so much of it is just noise with no art – I remain impressed after a rewatch.

[mehradhruv]

Advantages Of Roadshows & Tips To Organize A successful One

The Internet has been one of the most useful and integral inventions when it comes to technological advancements and human evolution. Be it healthcare, education, infrastructure, or marketing and brand promotion, the internet has its roots deep within the system. It’s hard to imagine what life would be as a business owner without online marketing, client retention, virtual community building services, customer engagement, and all the other benefits that come from the Internet. Over the year’s internet has been utilized extensively for the marketing and promotion of products and services to reach out to a wider array of audiences and grab client attention; however, the conventional ways of brand promotion can’t be neglected. One such way of brand promotion is Roadshows.

Roadshows are a great way to reach out to potential customers promoting a product or service in a fast and effective way. A roadshow can be an effective and affordable marketing game plan that can be put together in the shortest period and with the smallest budget. Amongst other outdoor advertisement services, roadshows have a faster turnover rate as they can be scripted and become an eventual hit with the sponsor involvement. The lively environment of the event and the engaging stream of content both help create a lasting impression of the brand amongst the participants. Roadshows are conventionally an outdoor form of advertisement which focuses mainly on the physical aspects of promotion, but social media can be integrated into the roadshows to make the whole experience more impactful and engaging for the audience.

Streaming the event online on social media handles of the company would help to keep the attendees interested in the brand long after the event is wrapped up.

 Events like these allow the speakers to take the main stage and discuss the latest trends of the industry helping to spread the leadership thought. An event like this is the optimal environment for the sales team to step in and show their magic through words, predesigned templates, and presentations. Moving beyond the conventional phone calls, emails, and social media conversation and striving to create actual face-to-face relationships with the targeted audience and the potential customers amongst them.

Now that we know about the advantages of roadshows over digital ways of promotion, let us see some tips to conduct a successful roadshow:

Focusing on the message delivered not on the facts: Most of the information that goes into the event is of great interest to the speaker and the precious sum of the audience gathered there. They don’t usually need every line and sentence     to be straight from the books as the audience for most of the event is internally battling it out about what it all means. The major focus in any roadshow event must be that the message the company wants to pass on to the audience reaches the attendees without ambiguity.

What your audience craves: The primary focus of any event be it outdoor or virtual is to understand the crux of what your audience is gathered to hear, what they crave. Once you understand the needs of the attendees, the brand identity and goal can be molded and reshaped around that need through marketing and promotion     strategies. This will help the brand to showcase its sincerity and authenticity to the audience. 

Using metaphors: Presenter Richard Hammond once described Porsche's rear-mounted engine as being, "A bit like building a pyramid with the pointy bit at the     bottom." Metaphors are a great tool, to sum up, complex ideas and thoughts quickly. Metaphors help grab the attention of the audience in a much better way and hook them up for longer conversations, speeches, and even sales pitches. This makes metaphors a valuable persuasive tool and a handy weapon in a speaker’s repository. No need for huge and complex charts and graphs, just a well-structured sentence with a bit of metaphor lucidly sums up the whole message.

Use of visuals: Are you able to represent your metaphor with something tangible, something physical that can easily be placed on stage? Something you can interact with? According to psychology in an average human brain, 90% of the information     transmitted is visual. Furthermore, images are processed in the brain many times faster than any textual format. Physical props are much more effective than slides. Think about it, talking about how an organization is losing resources is one thing; but holding up a bucket of water with a leak in the bottom is different. Find a way to show your audience what you mean and they will never forget you.

Slotting a Q&A session at the three-quarter mark: It is a good practice to never end the event or speech with Q&A sessions as there might be a chance the speaker may     end up in a scenario where you might have to conclude the event on a defensive note, back-pedaling and having to justify yourself in the face of tough questions or an unanticipated attack. Q&A should be placed or slotted at the three-quarter mark along with the speech. This helps the speaker to answer all the questions and then wrapping up the event as planned on a brighter positive note.

Leaving the audience with clear instructions: A speaker needs to conclude the event with clear instructions or guidelines to be conveyed to the audience. Now the question arises what should one say? You just need to tell them what they need to do if they are interested in the showcased product or service. If the goal behind your roadshow is to encourage existing clients to sign up for a new product, using the conclusion to be overt about it: "In a moment, I'd like you to stop by the table at the back and sign up. Then we will call you and organize a consultation."

Roadshows are a great idea and an invaluable opportunity to speak intellectually, emotionally, and with human connection, directly to your market. Put thought into how you go about your roadshow and the results will speak for themselves.

Happy touring!

 Dhruv Mehra is an author is this article. For More information on How to conduct Roadshows. Kindly Visit our Website.

[infotainmentplus-blog]

What is Kodi? Everything You Need To Know If you’ve been hearing the buzz about Kodi lately, you’re not alone — it is gaining momentum fast. What is Kodi? In the company’s own words, “Kodi is the ultimate entertainment centre.” It’s probably a fair description if you put that in the context of a media player. What is Kodi? Kodi is a free open-source software media center. It runs on pretty much any platform, including Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and macOS, so it’s an excellent way to access your media content across all of your devices. It has compatibility with many video and music formats, and it’s handy as a picture gallery. There are some pleasing features, such as the ability to use metadata to organize your music and videos. Posters, fan art, trailers, and video extras can be imported to supplement your movie collection, too. Everything about the display and menu system is highly customizable. What you don’t get is any actual media content. At the most basic level you could just end up using Kodi as nothing more than a file browser on your device, but it’s capable of so much more. What is Kodi offering that other apps don’t? Because Kodi is open-source, there are literally hundreds of add-ons and Kodi apps for Android which can be used to personalize and upgrade your experience. This really sets it apart from most of the media players out there. Your first thought might be to sync your media libraries across multiple devices. This may just be possible over your local network — if not there’s an add-on that supports it. As long as your content is stored in a suitable location, Kodi can allow you to access it from anywhere on any device. You can also watch and record live TV using Kodi. It might be a bit more of a hassle, depending on what you’re trying to access, but there are several available PVR add-ons for watching and record TV shows. Kodi has a growing number of community-driven add-ons for online content like YouTube, Hulu, Grooveshark, and Pandora Radio, as well as extra skins and more. There are add-ons for almost anything relating to video, music, radio, and TV. How easy is Kodi to use? The Kodi interface and menu system is very intuitive — you don’t need a tech brain to use it. Its long list of supported file formats also makes things simple. What is Kodi mainly used for? Despite being available on pretty much any device, the developers behind Kodi actually say it is designed with a home theater setup in mind, using a large screen rather than a monitor or phone. This means it can be controlled by mouse, touchscreen, or Kodi 18 voice, but it’s optimally navigated by remote control. Hundreds of different remotes and gamepads are supported, so compatibility is rarely an issue. Things can get a bit more technical with the add-ons. Given the number available, and the variety of tasks they perform, not all of Kodi’s functionality can be easily explored by the lay user. Thankfully, Kodi has its own very helpful Kodi wiki to walk you through many of the scenarios you might face. Is Kodi legal? If used as intended Kodi is absolutely legal, and officially it requires you to own all of the media content you stream through it. Using Kodi for any illegal activity is not condoned. You’re very unlikely to get into legal trouble for installing or using any of the add-ons from the official repository either. However, given its flexibility, Kodi can’t really prevent all illegal activity like playing illegally downloaded movies or TV shows. There are also add-ons from unofficial locations which allow access to copyright-protected content. Android Authority doesn’t condone using Kodi for any illegal activity. Working out which unofficial add-ons are legal and which aren’t can be tricky. Laws in the U.S. and EU regarding streaming other content can be a little unclear too. Streaming often means the whole file never exists on your device at any one time. This means it can be less obvious if your actions are a copyright violation than downloading a movie via torrent with apps such as Popcorn Time apk. The only surefire way you know you’re not infringing any copyright laws is to only use Kodi’s official add-ons. If you’re going to be more adventurous and try some unofficial offerings, proceed at your own risk. Now I know what Kodi is, are there risks? Accidentally or not, if you end up streaming something illegal, your internet service provider (ISP) may notice. After all, everything you do online goes through your ISP, and it might not take kindly to you abusing its service. It could decide to throttle your connection speed, or even cancel your contract altogether. Law enforcement agencies can also potentially trace illegal streaming back to you as well. Your IP address is regularly logged when you are online, and this can be used to identify your account. Knowing what is Kodi, is not enough to protect you. If you’re worried about who is watching you, you can always mask your activity with a virtual private network (VPN). How does A VPN help? Connecting to the internet using a VPN encrypts your data before it leaves your device. No other party can decrypt it — only your device and the VPN server. That way your ISP won’t be able to read the data you send through it. This gives you a little extra piece of mind if you are conscientious about your privacy. Your traffic is also rerouted through a server in a different location, often in a different country, which changes the associated IP address. In effect the VPN spoofs your location, which be used to stream geo-locked content through Kodi. What makes a good Kodi VPN? There are dozens of VPN providers to choose from, and they vary in quality. Some of them are free, but there are several reasons these are not going to be appropriate for use with Kodi. Most are hugely oversubscribed, and have a small download limit. The best VPNs aren’t free, but they’re not necessarily expensive either. A VPN can slow your connection down, which can seriously affect your Kodi experience. You should look for a VPN with proven fast speeds. You’ll also want to choose a provider that doesn’t keep activity log, and has an built-in kill switch for your connection if the VPN fails for any reason. There are other desirable attributes for any VPN too: Ease of use, good customer support, strong encryption protocols, and having a high number of servers in many different locations. There are some excellent VPN providers out there. ExpressVPN is regularly cited as one of the best all-round VPNs, and we came to the same conclusion with our review. It has all the features mentioned above, and in particular offers excellent connection speeds through most of its servers. Video always streams well, so it’s ideal for Kodi. Now that you know what is Kodi, will you be using it? Let us know. If you want to check out our Kodi VPN pick, follow the link below. Try ExpressVPN , via Android Authority http://bit.ly/2Fe0Kdq

[tremendouslypurplecollectio-blog]

What Is actually A Following.

. There's a really appealing interview over on Polygon along with Stoic Studios, programmers of the smash hit military journey label The Advertisement Legend which released on Heavy steam back in January and also is on. its own means to the ipad tablet In the meeting Calm mention exactly what that's like building an activity as a recently established indie workshop, and also 2 traits particularly actually stuck out to me. If, at this point, you are actually assuming, Tighten this, I am actually simply going to come to be Iron Male rather," Zehr possesses some problem for you. Matching up too awesome to come to be loathsome" with also big to fall short" possesses no connection whatsoever. Several of the targets were actually designated to a management group, meaning they failed to experience any kind of instruction after taking the reasoning examination. KurtG, you're out of your mind if you presume 10k for a modern desktop would certainly be a sensible price. 3 years ago, Shutoff chose experimental psycho therapist Mike Ambinder to head up the playtesting department from its own progression arm. The APA asked Hoffman to examine these allegations just full weeks before the launch from the Senate Intelligence information Committee's record on the CIA's use of abuse, a report that increased major questions concerning the involvement from psycho therapists in inquiry treatments. Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs launched the new apple ipad 2 at a special media celebration earlier this month. Fifteen years experience in private process assisted DOCTOR Vranich come to be a leading specialist in subject matters from fitness, worry decrease, nutrition, sexual activity and also connections, trauma and dependency. In reality, it attaches your mind as well as your physical body and also, remarkably, turns on muscle mass in the same way as when you are in fact executing in your sporting activity (though certainly not with the same magnitude). Our team usually think about ourselves in relations to exactly what makes our company distinguishing Let's mention I asked you to jot down 5 or 10 declarations that define exactly what makes you you." If you are the only female in a space packed with males (or vice versa), you will definitely most likely mention I am a female" or I am actually a guy" early in your listing-- considering that it is actually unique, so it's prominent at that moment. That will definitely end up being that much a component of you," Prepare claimed during his panel at a technology seminar in Utah Prepare after that acknowledged that there are technological difficulties preventing AR coming from coming true. When you have a strategy in location, you may keep your mind about what matters, and comply with the program when it really counts. Always remember that appreciating an individual and also intending to reside in a connection with them are distinct factors. The even more you do that, the a lot less stress you'll have simmering out, threatening to blow your top clean off. If your photos are actually still emerging darker or lighter compared to they view display screen, make certain the gamma setup (which handles the illumination of on-screen images) in your color printer vehicle driver matches the one you used to adjust your monitor. Nvidia has actually come to be the named beneficiary from a major switch in the computational criteria for artificial intelligence as well as deep-seated discovering, which rely on GPUs and also alternative processors to manage an other style from jobs. On the contrary, Steve Jobs might each imagine the iPhone as well as operate astutely (as well as boldy) along with developers to build the futuristic iPhone with what they carried hand. I originally began utilizing mind charts to brainstorm short article suggestions, but now likewise use all of them as a task management resource. When all the records picked up during the Tinder matchmaking method is collected, the surfacing image discloses a substantive quantity from applicable info. Additionally, this is feasible to come to be a monster via the journey Sickness Met By Moonshines After speaking and also conceding to the assistance the captive from the Falkreath Jail (he which gets rid of little bit of girls). They discovered that the training topics revealed a greater gain in thinking exam scores compared to the control topics. For Mac our experts would certainly count on to see a consecutive increase in Macintosh unit purchases due to the starting point of the education getting period as well as a latest refresh our team only carried out in the Mac computer Pro line. Carrot" is actually a referral to stick as well as carrot"- the words that distills both manner ins which individuals can be encouraged, either by force or even through will-and Innopage is certainly not the only one to have actually jumped on the suggestion that it may create a snappy name for an inspirational to-do application. This seems like your main incentive for participating in video games is actually very competitive leaderboards.

Cloud will end up being cognitive cloud," an ubiquitous virtual data repository powered through a digital brain" that comprehends human needs to assist our team interact with details effortlessly in job as well as life. The Different colors Influences Body, built by world-renown colour psychologist Angela Wright, determines that while people could possess specific choices for shade, the results of different colors influence people globally. The simpler alternative is going to regularly be actually to disregard, postpone or even decline the ask for, thus decreasing the thought process assists. It's likewise feasible that if you're attempting to imagine intentionally, you might recognize the experience in a different way in comparison to if you're aiming to concentrate on a duty, states Jackie Andrade, a psychology teacher at Plymouth College. If you do not make use of thoughts maps due to the fact that you discover thoughts applying software program troublesome, maybe it is actually time to attempt the good outdated marker and also newspaper course. http://www.invaloaredecumparare.com -seated knowing systems are basically ordered systems, yet they do not possess time.

[allies-of-allies]

Run after the information, Not the IT

I . T .-'IT'-is costly. Every single Chief executive officer, CFO, COO-virtually every director at every level of each and every organization around the world sees that irrefutable reality. It's normally a serious lines product in most firm budget.

For that IT dept, handling the business specialised capability suggests primary getting a merchandise that matches regardless of what have to have the organization has come up with (and sometimes the odd whim of the sole manager), then this invest in, setting up, education, and maintenance of the hardware components, software program, systems, and directories which are with the resource. Then you get to keep worrying about interfaces between the applications, reports, security (the two external and internal), as well as amazing, irrepressible, eccentric, and typically devastation practices in the users despite you've presented full last part-to-finish training about the cool product.

Then anybody changes their head and you get to do it all over for a second time.

I personally trust any urban place need to have a personal asylum for IT staff. This area must occur filled with regions for the briefly insane to execute individual and violent deterioration of computing devices, provide you with them a create of punching luggage built to resemble ignorant (not stupid, just unlikely) organization officers, plus an even more stomping terrain loaded with dummies designed to resemble an assortment of knuckle-headed end users. Plus a unique host to heck for online hackers...

Such a establishment could be loaded to potential at all times.

The madness doesn't halt with the IT dept. For other enterprise professionals, IT changes signifies several hours or days of training, down time and loss in productivity that accompanies IT challenges, problems, or process upgrades.

For sales people, an IT glitch could mean lost possibility, loss in profits, together with a less than stellar picture of the provider that can be in a customer's brain for a long time. Salesmen may in no way conquer an undesirable shopper encounter created by was unsuccessful IT. The saying "your computer is your friend" is simply not commonly spoken concerning sales agents.

But IT is a necessary bad, isn't it? What enterprise could purpose without this?

Nicely, it can be important. Even an resourceful young male or female going into the workforce the very first time mowing gardens requires a means for buyers to reach him/her, methods to manage a routine, possibly even a method to path who may have paid off their charge.

But can it must be satanic?

Imagine if the wicked-ness arrives because we're looking to resolve the incorrect disadvantage in the IT? We're aiming to power a circular peg to a sq . hole, imagining It could clear up our difficulty without the need of really pinpointing what the catch is? We purchase computers, networks, communications, and many types of things you can do another thing-take and take care of info. A basic simple fact that we inherently all know but gloss about-it isn't the IT that's essential, it's what's traversing that it really.

It's concerning the details. Those people modest bits and bytes that define characters that make up details elements that coalesce into information that delivers us knowledge that even more transforms into knowledge that can be used and acted when.

It's regarding the info. Nevertheless we run after the knowhow traveling the info.

But hold on (you say)! We now have our databases. That's aspect of the IT. That's the place our details are placed. We must have the IT to access our information. It's OUR details.

Perfectly, absolutely yes... type of.

Yet not actually. Your small business does store data in to the directories connected with your organization, usually in a proprietary database which can be aspect and parcel with the application you've ordered. Most-or at a minimum a great deal-of the data is replicated in other methods, some inner in your firm, but most clearly in certain other outward strategy. And starting a data bank is hard operate, what with getting things uncovered, parsed, moved into your correct career fields, approved, and the like. It takes time as well as manpower which means money spent.

As well as how simple would it be to get it back again from that data base one time you've wanted to start working on another neat IT product or service? The quantity of IT administrators operate an get out of method concurrently they're establishing their investment technique? If you opt for a exclusive solution, do you realize what facts protection under the law one has and just how you'll get rid of that product whenever the time is offered? Mainly because it will. (Moreover, the correct answer is often 'no'-it's hard enough to acquire the solution all set while revealing your vendor and business control that you're actually organizing (and shelling out resources on) its demise.)

Alright, so who may have the information (exactly where can be your data bank essentially positioned and who controls it? Having entry? Who possesses it (don't make an presumption here))? How might it be provided lower back allowing you to transfer it towards a competitor's system? Must you invest in a amazing (meaning, overpriced) method to draw out the info? Who handles challenges? Who preserves the documentation over time so you essentially know what that repository appears to be and exactly what each one element means that (since that changes way too)? This edges over the geeky but X may well not continually and for good imply X, or perhaps now its X 2. Probably X is already alpha-numeric whilst it began as numeric only. This information is completely essential-what improved when? With out that documents, you have not a way of understanding when your info is comprehensive, whether its actually appropriate or maybe its been damaged.

Really enjoy your data base executives.

So, back in who genuinely has the info. Regardless of whether your imminently clever IT director provides the bases dealt with in terms of database acquisition and everything, does one really unique the details features?

No. You own the intelligence which comes while using the information, or any subsequent storage containers and retrieval of this cleverness, but the truth is don't really are able to decide the details factors that make up that cleverness.

For example, the US Interpersonal Security and safety number. The US Administration holds it-its design and guidelines, as well as the information allocated each specific. Your business has no say with the subject. It will, yet, supply in a variety of methods. Some IT products use all nine personas-with or without the dashes-although some only maintain your previous 4, 6, or 7. Other places have very own detection quantities that look absolutely nothing like the US SSN. What to do now?

Just how long is actually a 'name' and who extends to determine what it really resembles (no system I'm aware about could grab the image Prince made use of for a time)? How long can a name be? What exceptional figures are made it possible for? What number of labels can a person have (primary/final/mid or 6-7 labels, Aliases, Beforehand Referred To As)?

Inside locations, some will say the administration manages a great deal of the opposite individually recognizable facts (often abbreviated to "PII") with the nation (most likely the US among them). There could be also some foreign consortium that trust they 'own' records associated with their subject of expertise (but I wager there's other consortium which would disagree with this spot).

We could go on. The idea is that none of us 'owns' a facts element, at least nothing at all that's arranged internationally, and that's a difficulty.

Why?

For the reason that we have been world-wide beings life as people in a global natural environment. No male (or land) happens to be an tropical island. Details moves around our world in the velocity of consideration as a result of social media marketing and interconnected solutions. It's perpetual-once a 'thought' is out there, it's available on the market completely since somewhere it's been caught by an IT 'system'.

Info is available from almost anywhere and then we can find out one thing about nearly anything with some vital cerebral vascular accidents (despite the fact that we have now no way of knowing the veracity of the items we find).

So, goods has gone out there in various varieties, most of it really is perfect, some of it isn't, and you also demand particular equipment to get most of it.

Just how can we realize whatever we know? Actually, I feel this period could eventually be referred to as the 2nd Darker Age range because we don't figure out what we recognize and possess not a chance to grab (into perpetuity) our information. Or trail of e-mail, remarks, memos, and so forth that instructs how you came to that information, why we created that final decision, why that specific pathway was picked, for example.

Personal computers, computers, cellular phones include an abundance of info that is part of someone or usually, an organization or group. When that machine will go to the truly great Recycling Container from the Sky, often through a fried harddrive which will make the info it contains hard to get at, all that details are lost. Reduce to black color.

I attended a lecture one time regardless in 1900 our information was increasing almost every 50 yrs. In 1950 it was actually each and every 25 yrs, in 1998 (as soon as i observed this) it absolutely was just about every 10 years, and also by 2020 it might be almost every 72 times. Say what? Just how do we take that? How can we recognize everything you know when it's all caught in disparate databases, disparate tools, in numerous develops?

How that is known do we cope with all of this records/data/know-how/intelligence?

We require help. We need the laptops or computers that will help us. Like in, Synthetic Intelligence (AI). AI might help us seems sensible of everything, excluding the 'all of it' is dispersed and parsed all over the world without having any standard kind or organizational construction.

So-can you imagine if we discontinued operating the IT and as a substitute drove the details (which can be whatever we want anyways)? Just imagine we have control over our info, controlled it, and standardized it all over the world?

Envision it-information element X looks like this, indicates this, is utilized by this nomenclature, owned (operated) with that firm and (perhaps) even up-to-date this way. It may do what ever it sought for it so long as it didn't affect the shape from the element!

It wouldn't matter just what it resource we employed-any fitted our demands and budget-due to the fact our data was remain-on their own and controlled such as Borg-collective. IT can not change the shape or concept of the data. Resistance is futile. Companies wouldn't need to shell out huge amounts of money determining and documenting their data source given that it may be standardized. They will only need to identify the info things they're serious about. A provider having a new IT device wouldn't need to customize their device for each and every shopper-your data sessions can be conventional (believe Products and services Focused Architecture on steroids).

Omg! But exactly how? How would be begin locking downward data?

It can get a worldwide endeavor, quite possibly a specific thing below the United Nations.

Presume there is a group that had good care of anything affiliated with Individually Recognizable Material, yet another for knowledge, one more for health and fitness, another for data processing, etcetera and many others etc...

It's imagination-boggling. There'd ought to a team in order to choose which crew a bit of facts ought to be brought to for managing (is 'checking account' part of bank, bookkeeping, private, or business facts?)

There will be disputes.

It's been attempted in advance of naturally, on smaller scales by small companies. None are actually thriving predominantly since the group of people didn't basically individual the info. You can't handle what you don't very own.

I disagree on this site, nevertheless, that it must be no more dependent on option. When we are to keep away from becoming that Secondary Dimly lit Age groups, we have to try to get power over our records and it must be a standard endeavor.

Start small, imagine significant, step rapidly...

Why not focus on a team devoted to individual qualities? Identify these factors. Create the information framework. Outline the equipment to reach, up-date, and terminate that details. Then switch from there.

Think about a society where by firms or individuals can purchase any IT solution off the shelf-minus the recent bureaucracy affiliated with key buys-should they want, with no matter what features they would like, considering that the data it makes use of is widely organised. It might preserve vast amounts of money (right after the Fantastic Info Shape with the Heavens was set up anyways).

Consider a entire world in which information and facts are outside of the IT operating it. You could have a databases however you can't affect the system or interpretation. Some aspects may very well be un-updateable with the exception of by an authorized party (e.g., provider facts like birth date) along with a get good at variant taken at what ever amount considered suitable-maybe nationwide then synchronized along with a community-huge repository. You possibly can coalesce the details into data and knowledge that (could possibly) come to be a different part of data and caught it its own appropriate but you will NOT up-date the 'truth' files element.

Indeed, I understand-get two aspirin and think it by means of... it would hurt the gray issue. It's better to chase the IT than receive a take care of on the files, this is why we go that way. But we will need to begin.

Content Resource: http://EzineArticles.com/9766302

[oddygaul]

Zenless Zone Zero

Well, I’ve been playing the shit out of this game, so fair warning, there will be significant brainrot ahead.

Overall, I really dig it. I’m a huge mark for character action games, and well-done life sims tend to suck me in; Zenless Zone Zero is nailing both those aspects pretty damn well. In fact, it’s nailing them well enough that… how do I put this… it starts to slip into the territory of being A Good Game Generally, rather than just a gacha. And while this is a big accomplishment for ZZZ, this also puts it into direct conversation with other full-price games, resulting in its gacha elements causing more friction than Honkai Star Rail’s ever did*.

*I’ll be comparing this to HSR a lot, because I play way too much of both and they’re made by the same developer. I recognize that it is pretty odd and potentially even problematic to A / B compare them when I could be looking at the game through the lens of, you know, Gaming At Large. But hey, that’s why this is a subjective journal and not a holistic review blog! It is what it is.

So, the aesthetic of this game fuckin rules - it’s like, late 90s to early 2000s VHS-core. The main characters run a Blockbuster, for Christ’s sake. Presentation-wise (and systems-wise, and, hell, music-wise), ZZZ is obviously borrowing a lot from the Persona series, but like… great? I’d love it if more things cribbed that style and made it their own, from the confidant hangouts, to the small but comfy explorable areas, to the dynamic menus with edgy character poses. The character design itself is all superb, all the way down to the crowd NPCs - some the shopkeepers here have cooler designs than the main characters of some other games. Even aside from the designs, ZZZ is doing a lot with lighting and color desaturation that really lends it its own unique vibe. They actually have a cohesive artstyle in here! wild.

The presentation of the story is also killer. Sure, a decent chunk of the conversations are just models lip-flapping at each other - although they at least emote and pose a bit here, unlike the Star Rail dialogue scenes with their demure princess waves. In the main story, though, we get not only a heap of fairly lengthy cutscenes, but also this really cool comic panel-style presentation.

I feel like there was a bit of a trend in the PS3/360 era of games to present a game’s story in this comic panel / storyboard style. I understood the motivation: games increasingly demanded a more involved, consistent storytelling approach, rather than the ‘One big rendered cutscene at the beginning and end’ they used to get away with, and the generation’s increased visual fidelity meant that doing even basic, in-engine cutscenes took a lot more resources to make something half-decent. In Spyro the Dragon on PS1 you could get away with a fun little 15-second gag with a barely animated polygonal yeti or whatever; in the PS3 era, you were going up against tryhards like Metal Gear Solid 4. Amidst this landscape, the pitch of having your illustrators pretty up some storyboards and put them in the game sounds like it’d save a lot of work - plus, consoles were finally outputting a high enough resolution that this sort of flat image wouldn’t be compressed to hell.

Thing is, I always kinda hated that approach. In some cases, I think that’s the popular opinion - I fuckin love Bayonetta, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defend its weird slideshow cutscenes. Even in games where the execution is perfectly fine, though, it rubbed me the wrong way. I think of Infamous - objectively, the art’s solid and fits the tone of the game, and the motion graphics aim to capture some of the dynamism typical cutscenes would provide. Despite all that, it still feels cheap to me - all of the panning, effects, and graphic imagery feel like they’re trying to polish up something that inherently doesn’t fit.

In ZZZ, though, I’m loving every one I come across. It’s obviously still done for efficiency reasons - there’s already a handful of characters that exist only in these panel scenes, saving the team the effort of having to model and rig them. But the freedom this allows for staging and storytelling is huge; the characters are more expressive here than anywhere else in the game, and we’re able to see situations with huge crowds and new locales much more often than would be possible in typical cinematics. And the illustrations are genuinely good, too - full of character, cool poses and creative compositions/angles.

if everything actually had to be modeled, there's no way we would've gotten Legally Blonde Nicole

Plus, the cutscenes are constant, and boy do I love the animation here. It feels so rare nowadays for a high-budget game to do stylized 3D animation of this ilk. Your biggest budget games are all going for the cinematic look, and pushing realism as much as they can - and while I know an immense amount of work and craft goes into animating something like The Last of Us, boy, I just could not care less about something so lacking in flair*. Even bigger properties that use a stylized artstyle these days, like Breath of the Wild, still tend to lean towards fairly naturalistic animation. Zenless Zone Zero’s cutscenes, on the other hand, spin and stretch motherfuckers around like we’re back on the PS2, are filled with forced perspective, and I am absolutely living for it. It’s not even reserved only for bombastic action scenes, either - we get honest to god character acting-focused conversation cutscenes.

*Seriously, take me back to the Naughty Dog that animated Jak & Daxter. Jak’s hero animation is top tier to this day

Of course, the combat animation slaps too; each of the playable agents is absolutely dripping with character. Even characters whose designs initially left me cold won me over once I saw the amount of care put into their movement and combo strings. It’s honestly shocking to me that this is the same studio that made Genshin Impact, a game I dropped after about 2 hours because of how lifeless all the animation felt*. Unique run cycles for every character, actual non-human designs, the flourishes everyone has when stopping mid-combo to snap them back to idle, the absolute synergistic audiovisual bliss of the parry… it’s really impressive stuff from a young team.

*Same studio in name only, totally different team, I know, but still

Mechanically, I have some mixed feelings about the combat as a whole. Zenless Zone Zero is, without a doubt, aiming to present complexity and depth as a team battler - that is to say, it’s more about team synergy, tag combos, and knowing who to use when, rather than soloing as any particular character. Nonetheless, I really would’ve appreciated individual characters having a bit more depth to their movesets; a jump, a launcher, cancels, anything. As outstanding as all the animation work is, there’s some characters that only have a normal attack string on square and one special attack on triangle. Like, sub-Dynasty Warriors level of complexity here. It’s rough.

This is where ZZZ’s gacha nature gets a bit ugly: so far, more complex kits and skill expression are mostly locked behind rarity, which is kind of scummy. In Star Rail, for the most part, 4-star characters are defined as such due to their numbers: they still have mechanics and complexity, they just aren’t tuned as high as the limited characters. Hell, in some cases they have more complexity. Ruan Mei is an almost incomparably stronger unit than Asta, but Ruan Mei’s play pattern is fucking boring: you use skill every three turns when it runs out. Asta, meanwhile, basically has her own risk & reward minigame that demands more thoughtful SP management.

In ZZZ, on the other hand, the lower-rank characters straight up have less going on in their kits. Nicole has like… one tech, sorta. Anby has one single animation cancel to chain her normal into her special quicker. Lucy’s only skill expression is choosing whether to tap special or hold special. Meanwhile, Zhu Yuan, a limited character, has a normal string that bounces between melee and ranged attacks, can be dodge-canceled at any point in the combo to branch into variations of the string, and a hold-normal attack string that’s completely different and has the same branching dodge-cancel tech.

It’s one thing to lock raw damage and meta viability behind a gacha, but locking the characters that are mechanically more interesting to play straight up sucks. If I hadn’t been lucky enough on the standard banner to pull exactly the two characters I find the most mechanically satisfying, I don’t know that I’d still be playing - and this is the point where ZZZ begs comparison to other, non-live service character action games. Sure, it’s probably not fair to compare a random A-rank’s moveset to Devil May Cry V’s iteration of Dante, a feature-creeped nightmare of a kit 3 console generations in the making. But what about Sengoku Basara Sumeragi, my personal character-action GOAT? By all accounts a mid-budget title, yet it offers 40 full characters chock-full of more unique mechanics and animation cancels than you can shake a stick at.

Fuck, can we please get a new Sengoku Basara? Please? I’m desperate out here. I’ll take anything, y’all.

There’s also the inherent issue that plagues every action RPG (usually deftly avoided by the character action genre), which is the delicate balance of player success depending on the numbers vs actual mechanical skill - a balancing act made even more noticeable due to the gacha genre-standard of characters taking weeks of grinding to level up. This is a topic for another day, but suffice to say, a big part of the reason Honkai Star Rail works for me as a very pretty version of Cookie Clicker is because of the Autoplay option. In Zenless Zone Zero, if you’re not willing to grind out the same mob fight for a week or two, you’re gonna hit an endgame roadblock of doing chip damage to a boss you’ve mechanically mastered because you’re underleveled, and boy, that never feels good.

For all those issues stemming from the gacha, I will say, it’s great that the story missions let you use the characters that are actually supposed to be present for those missions, even if you don’t own them. Aside from how nice it is to have an opportunity to put the whole roster through their paces, it goes a long way for actually getting invested in the story. Honkai Star Rail’s storytelling is a hot mess for many reasons, but it’s always particularly jarring rolling up to a sidequest at like, a local theater troupe with a wanted space criminal, the sitting president of a completely different planet, a ten year old child, and a shirtless cyborg cowboy, none of whom have canonically met each other; ZZZ’s approach sidesteps this issue. The proxy angle even provides a pretty valid diegetic explanation for why agents that don’t know each other might be working together.

Now that we’ve sort of meandered back to the story after talking about animation led us on a long detour - the story is surprisingly solid. In particular, I really appreciate how straightforward the writing is. I don’t know if the issue lies with the original text or the localization, but Star Rail’s dialogue, even in simple missions, tends to be incredibly meandering and overstuffed; ZZZ is a lot better about letting all its characters talk like actual humans. It also helps that the plot so far is a lot more grounded, and spends more time focusing on each faction’s group dynamics rather than the overarching plot. These games live and die by their characters, so leaning into those strengths is a smart move.

Zenless Zone Zero is, unfortunately, fully in line with Hoyo’s weird conservative politics - in particular, 1.0 and 1.1 are absolutely stuffed full of copaganda. With how many safety regulation jokes they made at the construction company, I initially hoped they’d lampoon the police faction a bit, or make a commentary on how comically heavily armed New Eridu’s police force are. In a vacuum, Zhu Yuan shouting combat lines like “Stop resisting!” or “Freeze, hands up!” while blasting someone with her gigantic, ‘JUSTICE’-emblazoned rocket launcher shotgun feels like it ought to be satire. Every time we talk to the officers, though, it’s just line after line about their solemn duty to protect the people of the city, how essential and important they are for the community, and so on and so on.

This wholehearted embrace of the world’s current power structure is something Zenless Zone Zero approaches in nearly the exact same way as Star Rail. In both games, your playable character is someone that’s sort of operating outside the law - in Star Rail, as the maverick organization that is the Astral Express, while in ZZZ you work as an illegal proxy. Despite this setup, any time the protagonists come into contact with a governing body, they are no less than thrilled to help them enforce the will of the law.

In Star Rail, you aid the local governments (one of which is an undemocratic monarchy) in committing massive cover-ups to hide their failures from the populace not once but twice. In ZZZ, you aid the police to an obsequious degree - playing along with them to not arouse suspicion is one thing, but helping them organize a fucking community day on Sixth Street? Fuck that. Hell, said community day is even shown to initially be DOA because none of the local residents trust the police - and you best believe we get two full scenes of the MCs changing the resident’s minds, resulting in them spouting shit about “Oh, it was our fault for judging the police too harshly - they really do have our best interests at heart!”

is it tho

There’s an argument to be made that the N.E.P.S. are a little different, given that they exist in a post-apocalyptic world with monsters popping up every day - and ZZZ’s copaganda is certainly a little less flagrant than something like Spider-Man helping the NYPD install civilian surveillance networks in Insomniac’s Spider-Man. And, sure, perhaps this can help excuse why they post fully armored, rifle-wielding soldiers in the Lumina Square DMV, and provides some justification that their existence is more helpful than the real world’s civilian-murdering property guards.

Thing is, though, at every turn you’re hit with dialogue and situations which make it clear that, no, they’re the normal cops. Every other sidequest seems to involve calling the N.E.P.S. in on somebody or helping with an investigation, and for every time we see them handle ethereal activity, there’s two instances of them being called in for petty property theft or something similarly minor - even the playable character has heaps of dialogue choices threatening to call the police on someone*. Much like Star Rail’s reactionary politics were strangely at odds with the ‘blazing a new path’ ideals of the trailblaze, Zenless Zone Zero’s obsession with the police puts a damper on its underground, counterculture aesthetic.

*Including a case where both options threatened this, leaving me without a non-narc dialogue choice.

illustration by Lv01KOKUEN

And finally… I don’t know where to fit this in, so I guess it just goes in its own little section at the end here. Lots of people, myself included, have touched on the Persona inspirations - and they’re certainly significant. One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention as a huge influence is Yasuhiro Nightow’s Kekkai Sensen / Blood Blockade Battlefront. From its sense of style to its worldbuilding, ZZZ damn near feels like fanfic to me. Hell, it’s right in the name - BBB? ZZZ? And this is on top of the dimensional crossover / big city vibe, the retro fashion, the different factions. Victoria Housekeeping might as well be Libra 2.0 - Von Lycaon is a damn near perfect 50/50 expy of Klaus and Stephen Starphase. And then Belle / Wise, who assist these powerful fighters in a noncombat role just like Leo, also turn out to have some sort of special magical eyes granted to them by untold powers from within the dimensional rift??

I’m here for it, don’t get me wrong - love Nightow. But that can’t be coincidence, right?

[oddygaul]

Hacks, S3

woof… me and my partner were talking about how much more cozy and relaxing this season was than the rest of Hacks, then we hit the second half. That ending was brutal.

This season is an odd juxtaposition of characters who have clearly learned and evolved, but who can't let go of one particular thing that ultimately undoes all that progress. Throughout season 3, Ava seems more stable, self-assured, and compassionate than she’s ever been. Before, it was sometimes hard to stay in her corner - for every moment I’d agree with her, she’d go and do something frustratingly short-sighted or shallow. Now, she seems to have grown so much. Every time she has one of her little pick-me-up sessions with Deborah this season, I was amazed at how empathetic and understanding she was - and not just using buzzwords like before, but actually understanding what they mean and how to provide support for someone.

At the same time, her rekindling of her relationship with Deborah is essentially a relapse. Even though she’s become wiser, and understands much more of what she personally needs from a relationship, we watch her give up everything she’s built on her own since being fired and crawl right back to Deborah. Honestly, it feels like the series’ backbone at this point is codependent toxic relationships, rather than the gender gap as it pertains to public perception, the workforce, and aging.

It felt like such a backslide that I was expecting Ava to, at some point, realize she deserves better than this and leave on her own terms. I was genuinely pretty shocked that the conclusion was Ava instead embracing the dark side and moving forward as Deborah’s writer. It’s a big, defining character moment, a fork in the road - a deliberate choice to embrace all of the negative traits she’s learned from Deborah, rather than rejecting Deborah’s belief that success only comes from ruthlessness.

In any case, this feels like the moment of the show’s arc where Ava might supersede Deborah. Despite inherently connecting with Ava’s character more due to age and my place in life, I’ve always regarded Deborah Vance as the real main character of this show; her life, past, and psyche are always center stage, with the other characters largely existing to provide impetus to explore them more deeply. This moment, though, may mark a turning point where Hacks becomes more about Ava and her ascension - and about Deborah leaving behind a legacy of not just what she’s accomplished, but who she’s created in her image.

[oddygaul]

Chain Gang All-Stars

Great book.

I sort of hope Chain Gang All-Stars is never adapted into a show or movie. It’s certainly possible that it could be done with proper deference to the tone and message of the book, but I think it’s far more likely that it would end up essentially being what Chain Gang is in the story itself - a hyper-violent spectacle that people tune into because they think it’s cool and action-packed. I think Chain Gang All-Stars is very successful at walking the tightrope line of drawing the reader into the story and letting them flirt with what it must feel like to be a viewer of the program, while presenting enough reminders of its grim reality to prevent you from being totally sucked in. While there were times during the LinkLyfe segments where I was drawn in the way a viewer absorbed in a reality show would be, the battles themselves never give in to ‘just’ being badass. They were tense, certainly, and I was on pins & needles reading them, worried about the characters, but there’s a certain utilitarian brutality to the writing in those sections that keeps them grounded. I’d be worried any adaptation would make everything too stylish and exciting, thoroughly missing the point*.

*To say nothing of any potential dilution of the politics to appeal to a wider audience.

— “All other sport was just a metaphor for this.” —

Chain Gang All-Stars is incredibly good at giving every single character a depth and fullness, even ‘antagonists’, so that even the characters who infuriate us, we understand to a degree. The book doesn't justify evil deeds - there’s no excusing Wil’s dumb ass self - but it shows how easy it is for someone to placate themselves, to keep themselves on a surface level and not dig too deep into their own morality, to convince themselves that they’ve done what they could and that all those who have wrong done to them deserve what they get. The fluid perspective switches it accomplishes this with are fascinating, too. We get chapters dedicated to different characters, of course, be it our leads, our deuteragonists, and plenty of one-off side stories - standard stuff. But Adjei-Brenyah also rapidly switches between multiple perspectives within the same page, hell, the same paragraph at times, which gives us insight into a much wider breadth of viewpoints than we normally would.

By getting to see into the inner thoughts of quite a few Links, we get to see how, while their individual experiences are different, their imprisonment has broken them all in tragically similar ways. From Bishop to Sunset to Thurwar to Staxxx, we see a consistent, crippling lack of self-worth. The A-Hamm chain is unique in preaching a vision of solidarity, accepting one’s past mistakes, and focusing on how they’ve grown and changed as people. Despite this, at their core, none of them can truly find it in themselves to be forgiven, because Chain Gang grinds their lack of perceived value into them unceasingly - ultimately resulting in what is essentially suicide. The carceral system does not allow for or encourage rehabilitation, only suffering and self-hatred.

I thought it was a compelling decision to make the majority of the imprisoned characters we follow legitimate violent offenders. A lot of the abolitionist / prison-critical literature I’ve read often focuses on, or at least begins with, incarceration that is plainly, nakedly unjust, like long-serving non-violent offenders and mandatory minimum sentencing. Conversations about the treatment of murderers, rapists, etc., are naturally more fraught - it’s harder to get someone to imagine an entirely different system, rather than just adjustments to the current system.

Chain Gang All-Stars does not shy away from it one bit. We get self-reflection from multiple different Links, both those who regret what they’ve done and those who don’t; we get conflicted thoughts from family members who recognize that their lives have been fundamentally changed by the imprisonment of their kin, but are still ambivalent about forgiveness; and we get, of course, the fearmongering and appeals to pathos used by government and the media to try and stop any ideas of abolition from even beginning to take root in the minds of the public. The book understands that there’s no easy answers, and instead brings all of these perspectives to the reader, demanding they grapple with the issues themselves.

It does, however, make clear the absurdity of pretending that taking someone whose life has been indelibly touched by violence and putting them into a system that encourages and requires additional violence, by the state, by their peers, is somehow rehabilitation. It’s brought to an extreme in the novel, of course - Thurwar’s overriding instinct that every problem can potentially be solved by violence due to the constant killing she’s done is more reminiscent of a soldier returning to peacetime than anything else - but the message stands.

Some of the most powerful parallels shine through as-is, though. Even when you put aside the horror the Links are put through on a daily basis and the rampant normalization of state-sanctioned violence, the base lack of freedom and personal autonomy is what breaks people. Both during Chain Gang and our looks at other prisons, the regimented days, planned schedule, and inability to spend time or talk with the people they care about are basic human rights that are removed from prisoners every day. Hendrix’s silent prison (an idea I was horrified to find has been enacted before) shows this in one extreme - after being robbed of something as simple as his own voice for so long, Hendrix is willing to risk everything just to be able to reclaim that part of himself. Most heartbreakingly, the morning of the final doubles match, Thurwar’s only desire is to stay in bed longer with Staxxx. Leisure time with your loved ones, one of the most basic luxuries a person ought to have, seen as an unobtainable prize. Don’t need a dystopian near-future novel to see that happening.

Speaking of Hendrix Young, the voice Adjei-Brenyah uses for his sections was absolutely beautiful and oozing with character and I loved it. The way he speaks is simultaneously poetic yet so pragmatic - there’s an idiosyncratic turn of phrase in nearly every paragraph, and his love for the world and its beauty is never eclipsed by his cynicism and the horrible things happening around him. His sections were handily my favorites, despite the looming dramatic irony that overshadows them all.

— “I thought of how the world can be anything and how sad it is that it’s this.” —

As a literary device, the interspersing of worldbuilding notes and Actual Fucked-Up Prison Facts was a genius touch. By priming your brain to expect something more fantastical, the more grounded notes become something of a sucker punch. The first few are all in-universe lore explanations - they’re not entirely necessary, you could’ve pretty much got the gist through context, but the thorough explanation written almost as an ad read pulls you into the mentality of this world… so then, when it drops, say, the net worth and founding members of the Corrections Corporation of America and you get the inkling that this tidbit feels a little too specific to be made up, the lines between the book’s world and our own start to blur.

In addition to the unique cognitive dissonance it invokes, I think it’s a pretty effective strategy to convince or teach a reader who perhaps hasn’t done as much digging about the nightmare that is the American prison-industrial complex. Especially given that the main conceit of the book is a little outlandish, it’s very easy for me to imagine such a reader enjoying the story for its plot, but deflecting or doubting the themes with the classic “Oh, but this is an exaggeration - it would never happen like this! It would never be that sadistic”. In some way, the footnotes feel like the author directly responding with a “Yes, it would, and in fact has already happened this way previously”.

I do wish the footnotes stayed as dense throughout the entire book as they were at the start. In the beginning, they come hard and fast, blending the real and the fictional, keeping the reader on their toes. About a third of the way through, though, they slow to a trickle, becoming a rarity. Adjei-Brenyah keeps experimenting with what the footnotes can convey (“Don’t look down. Help me.” was particularly chilling), but the infrequency starts to make them feel like an afterthought.

— “Just jump.” —

The closer I got to the end of Chain Gang All-Stars, as fewer and fewer pages remained, I was increasingly desperate for something to break. Even as the story continued towards the inevitable, even as it showed me there could be no other way for things to go, I hoped for something else. Anything but what happened.

And yet… the ending gives this book’s message a lot of its power. It’s not a story where things always work out and the good guys always win - it’s a reflection of real problems, and those real problems don’t have such a simple solution. Chain Gang All-Stars is about people living in an unfair world, working within a cruel, unjust, system, and still finding the strength and conviction to believe that there can be positive change. It’s about knowing that progress can be slow, and that the system can feel daunting, and feeling powerless to enact change, and still imagining and pushing for the world to be better anyway. And somehow, that it faces that hopelessness head-on makes it more uplifting than a safer story with an easier ending.

[oddygaul]

Tunic

Tunic is clearly inspired by, and aims to recreate, the sense of mystery you have when playing games as a child - you don’t quite know the rules of the medium, you believe anything is possible, and you approach the world of the game with a mindset of curiosity, learning, and awe.

Wonder is a tricky emotion to capture in art; you have to strike the perfect balance of revealing enough to pique a viewer’s curiosity, to get their mind racing to try and fill in gaps and explore possibilities, but not revealing so much that you set hard boundaries and begin to limit the space. I think this is especially true for games. As a child*, games are a land of endless wonder, because you simply haven’t played that many of them. As far as you know, anything is possible: you’re not thinking of things like invisible walls, skyboxes, AI routines, limited possible player actions - you just feel like you’re exploring a virtual world. As you get older, unless a game is really pushing boundaries, or you’re dabbling in a genre you’re totally unfamiliar with, your brain starts to apply time-tested heuristics to understand what you’re looking at: what was once a vast, sweeping city teeming with life, residents and lit-up windows becomes a bunch of big empty rectangles which you know likely can’t even be entered. Now, part of this seen-it-all sensation is likely also due to games as a medium maturing, and certain techniques and design philosophies becoming standards rather than innovations; mostly, though, I think it’s getting older, having more experiences under your belt, and the loss of novelty.

*As someone first getting into gaming, I should say, whenever that may be.

All that to say, it’s an incredible feat when someone can create something that inspires those feelings in even a hard-hearted 30-year old, and Tunic joins the hallowed ranks of Outer Wilds and Return of the Obra Dinn in succeeding in that task for me. There’s a lot of overlap in the techniques these games use to accomplish this feeling:

A lack of overt directions / instructions on where to go and what to do

Trust that the player will pay attention, take time to think about what they’ve seen and read, then draw their own conclusions and make their own decisions

A more open-ended game structure that allows for a player to follow up on what interests them most

Perhaps most importantly, as mentioned before, that exact balance of knowledge and mystery to set a player’s head spinning, while leaving them hungry to explore & learn more. Each of these games has different solutions that create this information gap. In Obra Dinn, it’s the passage of time leaving you only able to pick up the pieces of what happened; in Outer Wilds, it’s the passage of time combined with the vastness of space. In Tunic, it’s not being able to fucking read.

As someone who’s spent the past 15-odd years more and less successfully trying to learn Japanese, Tunic’s manual system perfectly nailed how it feels to bumble through a piece of media that’s not in your native language. Particularly, Japanese has a weird thing about it where one of the alphabets (katakana) is primarily used for loanwords, and it’s perfectly phonetic. This means that as soon as you learn that set of characters, even if you know hardly any Japanese vocabulary or grammar, you can often pick out one or two intelligible words from amidst the sea of kanji - and usually end up more confused than you were before, because the English that gets used for loanwords is often fucking wild. If you haven’t had that experience but have played Tunic, it’s literally the exact feeling as opening a page of the manual and seeing: “?????, ??????????????. ????? THE POWER TO DEFY DEATH ?????, ??????!” or “???? ????? ?????? THE HEIR ????, ????????. ????? HOLY CROSS ????, ?????.” Just say ホーリークロス!  ザ・エア!! in your best JoJo voice and you’ve pretty much got it.

Of course, Tunic’s real strength is that it manages to provide that sense of wonder from a multitude of fronts, with clever design and storytelling around every corner. Some of my personal favorite touches:

When you first get (well, figure out how to use) the warp ability, and it immediately lets you warp to areas you have no context for, like the Heir's arena with the giant floating sword, or the closed-off chamber in the Ziggurat

The repeated iconography that you don't question when you initially see it, but which becomes more unsettling with each new instance. The first time you see a Here Lies the Hero gravestone, it makes sense; this must be where the fabled Hero was interred. After seeing like, the 4th gravestone with the exact same statue and epitaph, though...**

After spending hours in-game searching across the entire map for the RGB keys, you trek back to the temple in the overworld, slot them into place, the vast rings sink down, and... nothing happens, the world around doesn't seem to react in any way, and nothing pops up to indicate where you should go next. Love it.

Getting to the Cathedral, seeing the sacred carvings of what appear to be eldritch tentacle monsters, and having no fucking idea how that ties into anything - if that's not a Bloodborne reference, I don't know what is.

**I had a similar ominous, growing feeling with the decoy items that look exactly like your little fox. At first, due to my Gamer Knowledge™, I didn’t question it - surely this is just using my character’s design to make its gameplay role clear, right? By the time I was at the Ziggurat, though, walking through chambers full of writhing, captive foxes, it didn’t feel so harmless finding a little me-shaped doll locked up in a chest.

I think it’s great that even after beating the game and seeking out all the secret content, you’re still left with lots of questions and just enough answers for your own headcanon to start coalescing. Personally, my conclusion is that the denizens of this universe learned they were in not just a simulation, but a game, which is why all of their religious iconography looks the way it does. The obelisks, with their RGB symbol prominently featured, indicate the nature of their reality; the Holy Cross is a technique developed by devotees and scholars that found a way to alter the fabric of their own plane using the sacred geometry of the controller's d-pad. Sure, at its core it’s basically a video game becoming aware it’s a video game - which, you know, has been done a thousand times - but the supremely cryptic, desolate nature of this story just makes it hit different.

I certainly had my issues with Tunic from a gameplay standpoint. Design-wise, it bothered me that a lot of the level knowledge you learn in this knowledge game is map shortcuts and hidden passageways - only for those shortcuts to be removed in the second half of the game, i.e. right when it would actually be useful again. Also, I was not a fan of the combat. I dunno how to explain it other than just bad gamefeel. Your character’s controls feel relatively loose and clumsy, yet all the bosses can leap across the arena with no endlag, all while having five times your reach. At first, the unforgiving nature of the combat managed to make the world feel hostile and alien, like in a good Souls game, but by the halfway point I was just fed up with the overly punishing fights and wanting to get back to the parts I actually enjoyed. Fortunately, the game does have accessibility options, so I just turned the combat slider down and didn’t look back.

Anyway, while those slight misgivings stop it from being one of my all-time favorites, Tunic is still an incredible game. Years from now, I’m not going to think about my frustration with the lazy boss gauntlet - I’m going to remember the night I spent with my partner decoding The Golden Path, frantically scribbling on pieces of paper like lunatics and awed at the secrets that had been sitting right under our noses since the very beginning.

[oddygaul]

Quick Hits #3 - Wendell & Wild, Triangle, Summertime Rendering

Wendell & Wild

Boy, what a weird movie. Look, it’s gorgeous, the animation was incredible, great character designs, the soundtrack fucking rules.

But there’s just so much going on here that it feels overstuffed. It’s like Wendell & Wild has 3 or 4 different A plots that they tried to shove into one movie, and the result is that none of the individual arcs feel fully cooked to me. There’s movies that handle this well, with certain elements left more subsidiary and subtle worldbuilding filling in the blanks, but that wasn’t that – there’s just straight up not enough screentime for all these different plots to land.

this was too funny. also I really love the flat, stylized faces W&W have in the underworld

Wendell & Wild themselves are charming, but their world is left fairly unclear – is that all of hell, or is it really just a roadside attraction they want to give a fresh coat of paint? Also, why are the humans so excited that the pair gets to renovate their torture chamber at the end? Are we just that supportive of our friend’s goals? Manberg and Helley were fully baffling, and we never seemed to get much of an explanation for how the two met, the origin of Helley’s powers, or why all the faculty seem to see her shadow walking around the school & not care one bit. While the prison folks are sufficiently evil, and we certainly see them killing off competitors or obstacles to their plans, it’s weird that we never see any of their prisons. It's such a missed opportunity for a show don’t tell moment – instead, Siobhan literally explains it to the viewer with a diagram. Similarly, Kat’s struggles in the foster system seem weirdly passed over. The villain’s schemes and the (intended) themes of the movie are meant to be about a corrupt criminal justice system and the school-to-prison pipeline, but all we really get to see is a 10-second flashback giving us the roughest outline of what happened to her. Hell, more time is spent on the city council vote getting rigged than is spent on the actual justice system.

honestly one of the hardest character feats I've ever seen

I dunno, I’m excited to rewatch this one day and maybe gel with it more… on first blush it just came across overwhelming and slapdash structurally.

Triangle

Man, worst first date ever.

This one really came around for me; I was pretty burnt out with the loops on the boat, but as soon as Jess makes it back to the mainland, holy shit… what a flawless final act. The way the conclusion immediately ties together all of the unanswered questions that have been stewing in your mind since the beginning, the immediate perspective shift we get on Jess as a character, the simple confidence of straight up repeating all the shots from the first act, and their totally different meaning now that we know the context… good shit.

It makes Jess a much more interesting, layered character: one that doesn’t fall neatly under categories of good or bad, just a flawed, stressed-out mother who made one mistake too many, unable to accept that it’ll be her final legacy and pass on. We see her good sides, her determination, her regret for her mistakes, but we also see the darker side in her temper and quickness to violence. Truly, as the movie alludes to many times, a modern Greek tragedy with a deeply flawed hero.

Hey, why was Heather in this movie, though?

Summer Time Rendering

I noped outta this one pretty quick. Things were already looking dicey when we got both a classic anime Oops Accidentally Bumped My Whole Face Into Your Boobs and a gratuitous panty shot by minute 3, and then it turns out this is a time loop story, and those are our time loop building block events, meaning every loop will start with the boob thing. Then, in loop #3, MC prevents his friend from crashing her bike – the event that leads to the panty shot – and we get the exact same panty shot anyway from her diving into the water?? nah fuck off

Anyway, normally I don’t record any thoughts for things I drop, but I kinda just wanted an excuse to post this exchange lol

[oddygaul]

WALL-E

Yeah, so, writing up the Pixar worldbuilding rant after watching Elemental made me want to watch this again. Still slaps.

I agree with the general consensus - that the intro section on Earth is incredible, and things go a little downhill once WALL-E and Eve make it onto the Axiom and the humans get involved. Honestly, though, I don’t think the Axiom stuff is bad, it just looks rough by comparison because the opening act is so sublime. I mean, they really knock it out of the park with the Earth section - the quiet desolation, the remarkably grim score, and the way that, amidst it all, WALL-E has built a life there anyway. Seriously, his home with its rotating shelves full of trinkets… inspired.

After seeing this wall of captains, and the fact that the president of BnL is portrayed by Real Human Man Fred Willard, I am only left to conclude that humanity literally evolved from flesh and blood into CGI over the course of humanity’s journey to the stars. If only we could be so blessed.

Important realization I had this watch: WALL-E is… a himbo?

Now, I know the first big sticking point here is gendering the robots at all - one of them’s a lil trash buddy and the other one is a trigger-happy collection probe. There’s really no reason for either of them to canonically be gendered, and none of the other robots in WALL-E are coded any particular way. Still, WALL-E and Eve are given male and female voice actors, and the shape language is there, so I’m going with the traditional heteronormative interpretation here.

With that out of the way… WALL-E is one of Hollywood’s biggest himbos. I will not be taking further questions.

[oddygaul]

Piranesi

I write this post under the watchful Gaze of the Statue of the Gorilla in the Fifth Northern Hall. May his Strength and Resolution give me courage!

art by upongoblinhill - link to prints

I can’t remember the last time I finished a book this quickly. Piranesi’s biggest strength, I think, is in its writing and pacing. The world and setup are compelling enough on their own, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the transportative nature of the prose that refused to let me go.

It’s easy for me to imagine a version of this story written from another, more common angle: perhaps seeing the proceedings from Raphael’s point of view as she slowly unravels the mystery, or having us follow someone who has only recently entered and is still exploring the House, or even just following Piranesi’s journey from a detached perspective that treats his worldview more dispassionately. That we instead get a window right into the inner thoughts of someone who’s been inside the House for years is what makes this story tick. From little flourishes, like the capitalization and proper noun-ifying of seemingly insignificant details, to full-on religious practices, like Piranesi’s divining of the hidden messages that nearby birds give him via landing on different statues, we get insight into the House not only as it is, but the House as it is perceived. Because we get to see everything through the lens of Piranesi’s obsessive care and attention to detail, it becomes easier both to become immersed in the house as a fictional setting, and to start believing diegetically in the beneficence and grace he characterizes it with.

It also feels (as Clarke clearly intended since she references it multiple times) like getting a peek into the head of an outsider artist. The same day I started this book, I actually walked by a museum with an entire section dedicated to Henry Darger. I then immediately made the connection reading Piranesi’s categorical, dizzying knowledge of all the House’s statues and their (invented) inherent meanings - this incredibly niche, almost absurd knowledge, from an outsider perspective - to a body of work like Darger’s. I was stoked to see the idea of outsider art / academics brought up in Matthew’s notes later.

—

From a conceptual perspective, it was also very cool reading about a crackpot cult leader whose off-the-wall beliefs were actually right. I don’t spend a ton of time reading / listening to stories about cult leaders, serial killers, or conspiracy theorists (it bums me out), but one element of those stories that always fascinates are the ridiculous ideas they manage to convince their followers to believe. In those contexts, it’s bleak, because no matter how much they spark the imagination, I know they’re just snares and falsehoods used as means to an end - so it was satisfying to read the excerpts from Arne-Sayles’ theories, which surely sound like nonsense to everyone in-universe, from the perspective of someone that’s living proof that all of those ravings are unambiguously true.

And we only saw one of the dozens of worlds!

—

One of Piranesi’s most prominent themes is examining what aspects of our past selves we carry with us as we grow and mature. The story focuses clearly on this with Matthew Rose Sorenson’s / Piranesi’s huge personality changes, obviously, but there was a lot of nuance to it I liked. One of my favorite bits was how drastically different Piranesi’s temperament was compared to what we know of Matthew’s. It’s difficult to truly compare, of course, because most of what we learn of him is through unreliable narrators Ketterley and Arne-Sayles - how much does someone calling you arrogant really mean if they themselves are the height of arrogance? Still, by most accounts Matthew Rose Sorenson was haughty and self-important, while Piranesi approaches the world with kindness, understanding, and optimism.

Is this simply what Matthew’s mind would be if freed from all the baggage and minutiae brought about from a clout-chasing academic life, and getting a fresh start enabled him to become this more empathetic self? Is the House itself truly a font of knowledge and peace, whose benign influence, if allowed in, can soften even the most calcified personality? Was it just random chance that Piranesi developed the way he did after his mental break? All seem like equally viable possibilities. 

The things we see Piranesi carry on from his past life as Matthew are scattershot. There’s the obvious ones, like his love of journaling, or the scientific curiosity that drives him to chart out and record the things around him. A trait I found curious, though, was the strong belief in animism he seems to have developed in the House. We see from reading Matthew’s old journals that he’s done plenty of research into Arne-Sayles’ work, including his theories regarding the power of ancient man and their ability to communicate with the world around them. However, despite not believing in it at the time, the idea clearly stuck subconsciously and resurfaced, as Piranesi has a real gift for communing with the World of the House, from the tides to the birds. Who could say if these abilities are still possible in the regular world, but in the House, at least, it seems that this communication is possible, and Piranesi has become quite skilled in it.

Meanwhile, despite not being trapped in the House and ostensibly being able to retain his faculties, we watch the Other try again and again at his inane rituals, thinking of increasingly far-fetched adjustments to his experiments with no results to show for it. In this way, despite not ‘losing his mind’, as he says Sorenson and James Ritter have, he is stuck in his ways to the point of self-defeat - it is his lack of reinvention and self-growth that is his biggest weakness. Our protagonist, on the other hand, despite having seemingly lost everything from two separate lives by the end of the book, is able to make his way back to the ‘real’ world as something more than the sum of his parts. Rather than either extreme of falling back into routine or totally forgetting what used to be important to him, he’s able to forge the best parts of his past selves together into something new, and continue moving forward yet again.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

[oddygaul]

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Well, this is an immediate improvement over the last one for me due to the visual variety - love me some post-post-apocalyptic urban greenery, and they actually use it for a setpiece or two this time. Action scene consisting of monkeys locked in mortal combat? I sleep. Action scene consisting of monkeys swinging their way up a skyscraper overgrown by centuries of foliage? aw hell yeah.

I love that we had a timeskip, but have some reservations about how the movie ultimately dealt with it. Typically, the appeal of a timeskip is getting a soft reboot for your setting with less legwork involved - you get new characters in new circumstances, and you don’t have to show every single step along the way to justify them. This is utilized to the fullest in Kingdom for the ape society, and it rules. After an entire trilogy following apes that grew up alongside humans, with all the baggage and preconceptions that brings, it was a breath of fresh air to get to know not only ape characters, but entire ape societies that developed on their own, apart from any human influence. This way, we get to see what the apes value intrinsically when left to their own devices, and not just as a response to their place in the human world.

Kingdom understands that this bent is interesting, thankfully, and spends a lot of time exploring these themes and offering up different possibilities on how things might shake out. Noa’s eagle clan is pretty insular - they seem to have little-to-no information about the history or context of their world, but they’re a strong, vibrant community with their own traditions. I think their defining trait to me was kindness and a sense of devotion to their community - there’s a bunch of beats in the first act that seem like they’re about to lead to conflict, like Noa getting caught eavesdropping by the warrior ape, that instead spin positive. And Noa embodies those traits - he’s not just daring and physically able, but he’s a helper. I really liked that one of the initial defining character moments we’re shown is him taking his spare time in a handful of scenes to whittle up a support to fix the village’s fish drying rack.

movie definitely could've used more gay orangutan

Proximus, on the other hand, is a real ‘how often do you think about the Roman empire’ kinda guy. The apes may have lost the technological know-how required to record and distribute podcasts, but rest assured, if they had it, Proximus would be saturating that market. Genuinely, though, Proximus’ civilization (and Raka, on the other end of things) are interesting looks at how history and truth trickle down through the years - how once certain events are out of living memory they can be distorted, and how a message can be warped, with certain bits picked apart to be used by individuals as they wish. This archaeology is an entertaining bit of dramatic irony for a knowing audience, to watch this future society investigate a past we’ve seen, uncovering partial truths and attempting to slot them into their imperfect knowledge of their world.

Proximus was a great villain - I was surprised they got rid of him so quick, to be honest.

On the other hand… I kinda hate what they did on the human side of things. Now, we don’t see a whole lot of their culture, as it’s largely relegated to what we learn from Mae and our little peek at the bunker towards the end, but from what we do see, human culture seems largely unchanged. It seems as if they’ve successfully passed everything down, generation to generation, from their knowledge and technology to their mistrust of the apes. With the soft reboot, we had the chance to start from scratch and show both human and ape society emerging from the ashes, and some interesting sci-fi about how different their values and goals would look after a few hundred years. And despite doing that with aplomb for the apes …the humans seem to be fighting the same war they were fighting hundreds of years ago. As someone who was pretty tired of that human narrative by the second Apes movie, I’m not exactly thrilled that we seem to be picking up right where we left off.

Wouldn’t the cool play here have been to show a totally new human culture emerging from the infected, so that the astronauts that eventually return from their space mission actually have something to contrast with?

[oddygaul]

Scavengers Reign

Holy shit, good western animation that’s not comedy and actually has a focus on aesthetics, setting and craft??

Seriously, I still can’t believe something like Scavengers Reign got made. This feels like a student thesis film you’d see on Vimeo, not a full 12-episode series with a healthy production schedule.

I loved this show. The artstyle is a clear rip of Moebius, but that’s… fucking sick? I mean, given how little that style has been successfully adapted for animation, I’m all for it, especially when it’s done with this much care and skill. Seriously, some of the longer environments shots could genuinely pass for later Moebius illustrations. The colors are also gorgeous throughout, managing to make each biome feel distinct (and thus sell how far our characters have traveled) while maintaining a consistent, muted vibe over the course of the story.

The star of the show, obviously, is the ecology and creature design. Even with no added context, the designs are all very cool, from the little rolling polyps we see everywhere to the stampeding ungulates. But the thing that sets this show apart is the clear ecological niche we’re shown for each species. Nearly every creature we see, we learn something about: their source of food, their natural predators, the unique behavior they’ve adapted to thrive in their environment. And the comparison to nature documentaries doesn’t just stop there - they even directly ape the style, editing and content of documentaries, like when the show focuses on territorial disputes between members of the same species, or highlights a predator taking advantage of its prey’s weakest moments to strike.

Some of my particular favorite ideas: 1. All of the various white-coated creatures near Azi’s desert encampment that blend seamlessly into the spires for camouflage 2. The seafaring creatures sucking up their young for protection during the lightning storm, and the parasites that come in to gorge themselves while they’re defenseless 3. The fact that the little Grey-looking gecko-apes (Hollow’s species), given their intelligence and powerful telekinesis, could clearly become apex predators and take on prey many times their size… but instead use their hypnosis to force other species to get food for them, because it takes way less energy expenditure. That’s nature, baby!

The show definitely drags a bit around the halfway point. The start of the story is explosive, as we follow the viewpoints of 3 different groups of survivors and their drastically different situations. The character dynamics are great in the beginning - Ursula and Sam’s early mastery of the wildlife during their expeditions, Azi’s reticence contrasted with Levi’s developing personality, and the slow horror that unfolds as Kamen is taken in by Hollow. For the first few episodes, we have no idea where things will end up, and it’s exciting watching things play out.

By the midpoint, we’ve basically lost Kamen’s point of view, as his arc is put on ice until the end of the show, so we’re just bouncing back and forth between Sam & Ursula’s perspective, and the group Azi finds herself falling in with. Sam & Ursula’s narrative feels like it gets stuck in a rut here, as Sam gets infected with two different parasites back to back; I really feel like they should’ve committed to one (preferably the plot thread about the previous survivor) rather than trying to land the same emotional beat twice in a row. On Azi’s side, while I understand what they were going for with Kris and the other newcomers, their story never really got compelling for me. Scavengers’ strength is the planet and its bizarre alien life. Levi, with their dawning sentience and growing connection to the natural world, really fits into those themes; replacing that with a ‘Humans were the real monsters scavengers all along!’ subplot is a tough sell, especially when the characters driving it are about as charismatic as a puddle and have some of the most awkward acting / writing in the show.

There’s even some form issues in the middle section. In classic anime fashion, the visuals take a bit of a hit; there’s less standout background work in the 2nd act, and the character animation suffers at times. I also found the editing distracting in this section; with only two points of view to go between, the constant cutting between the A and B plot started to feel artificial and distracting. Also, since we more or less have an idea of how the stories are going to come together by this point, there’s a sense of inevitability to the proceedings.

Fortunately, things come back together in the end; Ursula leaving Sam behind is every bit as bittersweet as it should be, Levi’s resurrection by the planet-flowers is fascinating, and the sequence where Hollow is returned to its natural self, courtesy of a Levi-supplied Total Perspective Vortex, is just goddamn gorgeous. Seriously, if anything can become iconic anymore in the constantly shifting hell that is today’s media landscape, it’s this breathtaking animated montage of life germinating and evolving on Vesta. Well, that and the buckwild life-to-death flower pollination sequence in episode 3. Fully expecting to see those posted as captures on random forums one, five, ten years from now.

Here’s hoping for season two, or anything more from this creative team! They can’t leave us hanging with the fuckin Imperium of Man showing up at the end like that, can they?

[oddygaul]

Spiritfarer

This game was a weird experience for me. I wanna say that a story like this is more about the journey than the destination - and that’s copacetic narratively, as the unfolding stories of each of the passengers are far stronger than the capital p Plot the game builds towards - but from a gameplay standpoint, the journey itself largely felt like a tedious timesuck, and I kept finding myself wishing we could get straight to the point.

Let’s do a compliment sandwich here.

The overall vibes are immaculate, and the world of Spiritfarer is incredibly cozy. The dialogue is delightful - and not only with the main characters! Even the random villagers always have something charming going on. I think the last time I was actually this enthused to talk to minor NPCs was A Short Hike.

They’re not always cheery, either; the game has a lot of that old-school Animal Crossing edge that got sanded away over the years, where characters are actually allowed to be abrasive or even straight up dislike you. Spiritfarer has multiple passengers that, upon meeting you, are anything from fully disinterested to straight-up jerks. Some of them will warm to you over time, as in the OG Animal Crossing, but some will just never really like Stella all that much… and they will loudly, vocally share that fact with you. Even some of the friendliest, most open characters sometimes need their space. This wider spectrum of interactions goes a long way toward making the characters feel real and engaging, and it’s something I’ve missed in this space for a while.

The art and especially the animation work is absolutely stellar, too. Each of the characters have strong silhouettes, and the animators really make the most of each design’s unique attributes: Stella’s big wide-brimmed hat puffing up when you use it to glide, the Everlight’s infinite transformations into whatever’s handy for the current situation, Bruce and Mickey’s big guy little guy dynamic*, Gustav mightily leaping from floor to floor. A 3D game with this concept would likely stick to a handful of rigs for the characters and keep their movement simple, so I give a lot of credit to the Spiritfarer team for going the extra mile and putting such care into making the passenger animations lively and creative.

*Well, this one is only fun until you find out the why behind the dynamic

Daffodil is the cutest fucking name for a cat btw

Unfortunately, despite how fun they’ve made the basic movement, the actual gameplay bits get pretty tiresome. It turns out that much of the moment-to-moment gameplay is actually doing chores on your boat, and they start to feel like chores remarkably quickly; while running, jumping and ziplining all feel great, most of the production minigames, like watering plants or smelting, are tedious and time-consuming. 

For the first third of the game or so, you’re unlocking new building minigames regularly, so they all feel somewhat novel. Plus, the density of the early game lends itself to a constant multitasking that feels satisfying. You’ll set your boat’s navigation system off to a location, then decide what form of crafting or farming will be the best use of your time; the result is a great “just one more turn” loop that's pretty engaging. The thing is, due to the length of the game, the pacing simply doesn’t stay that tightly engineered. You’ll run out of new buildings and minigames to unlock, start to get tired of the ones you’ve done dozens of times, and have to return to the same islands to farm materials over and over again. 

I will say, I quite liked the cooking system. There was something satisfying about guessing what different ingredients would pop out a new dish, and the illustrations for all of them are cute enough to make the experimentation feel worthwhile.

And unfortunately, this pacing inconsistency applies to the story as well. At first, you’re running into new faces constantly, and at any given moment will have half a dozen passengers on your ship, making it feel like a lively community. The rate of new passengers slows down dramatically, though, and for much of the back half of the game I had only 2 or 3 passengers aboard, leaving the game feeling empty and rote. 

This is not an easy problem to solve - it’s gotta be near impossible to keep the pacing curated if your game is this long - but maybe Spiritfarer didn’t need to be this long? 30 hours is fuckin HEFTY for this kind of game. I dunno, it’s certainly possible other people found the management sim side of things engaging and equally as worthwhile as the character interaction, but to me it mostly felt like busywork keeping me from the story bits, so my patience for it grew thinner and thinner.

For the first half of the game or so, I had a running theory that Stella didn’t actually know any of the passengers, and these people were being enchanted by some sort of Spiritfarer glamour that presents you as someone they’re comfortable / familiar with. The game makes the truth clear as it goes, but a part of me really likes that idea of the ferryman taking the form of someone that can put the departed’s minds at ease. I think that’s how the reapers in Dead Like Me work..?

Now, the reason my frustration with those elements was intense was because boy I got invested in these characters. A few missed the mark for me (I’m sure everyone who plays this game has a different group of passengers that really pushed their buttons and those that didn’t), but so many of them were memorable and heartbreaking.

Gustav, with his desperate hope that the transcendence of art can outlive any individual, really speaks to some existential crises I’ve gone through myself

Alice, who in her old age finally has the means to travel and go on the adventures she always wanted to, only to be betrayed by her failing body... I literally watched this happen to someone close to me weeks before playing this, so the moment was a gut punch. And then that development is tied into the gameplay, by making you move Alice's house to the ground floor because she can't use the ladders anymore, and you have to walk her out to the deck and back every day... inspired, and soul-crushing.

The reveal that the reason Bruce does all the talking and initiates all the pair's movements is because Mickey's been in a coma the whole time... broke me. And then Bruce decides to end his own life because he can't bear to go on alone anymore? Jesus, man.

Okay, I get that I'm a mark for any story touching on Alzheimer's, but Beverly's depiction of the disease was particularly brutal. The Alzheimer's I've dealt with was a very language-based version, so Beverly getting halfway through a sentence and realizing it wasn't right, saying things like "Just give me a moment" or "Let me just take a little break and I'll finish" then giving up in resignation... fucking hell. Too real.

In general, the amount of spirits whose arcs aren’t resolved when they go out is rough. Despite being a work that’s clearly focused on death from the start, Spiritfarer initially feels like it’s going to be a somewhat sanitized look at the topic. You’re going to take these spirits to the door of oblivion, sure, but we’re going to get complete character arcs, we’re going to work through trauma, and people are going to go through the door when they’re good and ready. And for the first few passengers, that’s true… but things get dark quick. Bruce’s tale, as previously mentioned, ends with him killing himself. Atul, one of your most easygoing, dependable passengers, simply disappears one night, never to be seen again. Jackie, who embarks rather late to start a journey of self-improvement, gives up halfway and straight-up tells you he can’t find anything about himself worth living for and suicide is all he deserves. Spiritfarer even twists the knife by letting us read some of his journals afterwards, showing he feels a deep regret and self-loathing for his past actions… he just can’t find any way to live with them.

This is what I respect the most about Spiritfarer’s musings on death, I think. Rather than dressing everything up in neat metaphors and giving you emotional catharsis, it’s not afraid to show death as sudden, as unsatisfying, as desolate, as lonely. By presenting itself so whimsically, it gets the audience to let their guard down so the hard moments hit them with full force. I wish they could’ve had the confidence to lean on those moments without feeling the need to pad the time in between with monotonous crafting systems.

[oddygaul]

Porco Rosso

You know, I usually forget about Porco Rosso when thinking about my favorite Ghibli movies but it’s a banger.

After this rewatch, it’s hard for me to think of it as anything other than Miyazaki’s self-insert fanfic. Seriously, this is like his ideal world - everyone’s flying their personal planes around and parking them like they’re cars at the local diner, Porco’s this big cool guy who everyone respects and all the hot babes are into, and he gets to live alone with no one bothering him in a cool island cove. It’s even set in 40s Europe, so he has all his favorite fascist planes available*!

*oh yeah, you thought The Wind Rises was problematic? Let me introduce you to Studio Ghibli’s namesake and start unveiling the pattern here

behold - the intractable chaotic force that is two dozen kidnapped schoolgirls

Anyway, I think the strongest point in Porco Rosso’s favor is that it’s just funny as fuck. I don’t know how the Japanese audio track is, but the dub is some king shit. I get that this is a ‘when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail’ situation, but honestly it has Big Redline Energy imo.

We’ve got your classic early 2000s gravelly-voiced Steve Blum-alike too-cool protagonist, contrasted with a world surrounding him that absolutely refuses to take itself seriously with constant dumb gags and throwaway jokes. The American guy provides a lot of this (I died at the raw fuckboy energy exuded from him saying “That’s my favorite line from a screenplay I wrote”), but it’s everywhere - the fuckin Carnival Cruise liner deploying their own personal fighter jets to fight off pirates, with color commentator already on deck and raring to go, was probably my favorite. Even the dogfights, which for the most part remain somewhat grounded and above board due to Miyazaki’s plane fetish, get real goofy at points, with Porco and Curtis throwing wrenches at each other like a cartoon.

I mean, come on! ehh? right? just me?

sidenote: while grabbing these caps it was interesting to see the contrasting approaches to showing the engine's power in each of these scenes. In Porco Rosso, they focus on the characters themselves and their elastic properties, showing Porco's ears and jowls flapping wildly in the wind, which leads to some great freezeframes. Frisby doesn’t have much in the way of loose body parts, so instead they focus on his loose shirt billowing with the force - it doesn't really translate as well in a still but looks great in motion.

At the end of the day it has its issues - I’m still not convinced it’s just Porco that doesn’t take women seriously and not the movie itself - but it’s a damn good time.