Review: The Force Awakens

I love this movie.

I'd forgotten what a shot of adrenaline The Force Awakens was. Finn's character, his bromance with Poe, Adam Driver's ironically wonderful performance of Kylo Ren...

The Force Awakens might just be my favorite Star Wars film.

I actually struggle to find things to say about it, other than to sing its praises. The score is great, the writing is great, the effects are great, the characters are great, the sets are great, the action scenes are great... The Force Awakens is, to me, the platonic ideal of what a Star Wars film should be.

What's really left is to talk about all the ways it improves on things. Practical and digital effects are blended together much better here, Han Solo's characterization is much better, and inf fact he's so much more likable that the death blow really does feel like a character cut down before his time.

It's not perfect. I mean, the flaws are so petty and small in comparison to how much about this film that works that it's hard to even ask what flaws. Maz Katana is kind of a handwave on Luke's lightsaber, there's at least one character at the beginning of the film played by a notable actor who seems like he'll be important only to die almost immediately, there's a will they won't they romantic subtext to Finn and Rey's relationship that's not going anywhere any time soon but... It's just so hard to care. The Force Awakens is funny and clever and interesting and the production value is sky-high. It feels like such an effortless slam dunk that you kind of forget all the crap that it's plastering over from sequel creep.

I love this movie.

I'd go as far as to say that if you only ever watch one Star Wars film, this one should be it.

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Review: Revenge Of The Sith

Sad to end the prequel trilogy on this note but Revenge Of The Sith was frankly the least enjoyable film I watched of the bunch.

Unlike other films, which pleasantly surprised me with their level of quality, Revenge Of The Sith simply had beats I was looking forward to and a lot of dead air in between.

I think part of it is that even the cast was feeling fatigued at this point. Coming out in 2005 with Phantom Menace premiering in '99, I'd wager at least six years of their lives were dedicated to films they had less and less investment in. Natalie Portman seems like she's phoning in all but one scene and I can't blame her because a previously kick-ass Padme is turned into kind of a background damsel in this film.

The core of the film, Obi-Wan and Anakin's fallout, is perhaps the strongest part and the scenes on Mustafar are genuinely where the film hits its strides but it was surprising how tempted I was to just... Skip to the good bit. From Anakin's actual turn to that climactic conversation requires almost an hour of long investigation and betrayal and logistics that I'd actually yelled out "Go cut that man's legs off already!" at my screen.

And it is a lengthy experience, a 2-hour 20-minute film which feels like 3. It's not the longest Star Wars film, The Last Jedi is 2 hours and 32 minutes and Attack of the Clones is actually a longer film at 2 hours 22 minutes but this is the one which I felt could be tightened up the most. Personally, I think below 130 minutes is the best length for a Star Wars film but your mileage may vary.

It's not unwatchable but if anything, I'd say skim the progress bar on this one. It's kind of predictable and it really feels like it's just going through the motions, so rather than sit through minutes of fluff, it's best to be your own director here.

And that concludes it. Six films, two trilogies, and it's not like I came out with some grand revelation. I actually don't really feel more or less love for the series at the end, and while there were some pleasant surprises the most poignant thing I can say about Star Wars is that it consistently plays out like commercial genre fiction, and for what it is... That's fine. I think we keep trying to attach this grand narrative to Star Wars when in truth, it probably has more in common with contemporaries than people would like to admit. Influence might make for a legacy and intrigue but when you get down to brass tacks, what you're left with is a set of above-average fantasy films that use the aesthetics of science fiction to tell a straight-up heroes tale.

And I think that because of that, we shouldn't take it too seriously.

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Review: Attack Of The Clones

Well. Shit.

I think I really liked this one.

I can't really say what it was about Attack Of The Clones that I enjoyed more than... Well, the rest of the films but part of me thinks it's just because of how much this film crams in. The over-the-top sequence on Geonosis, every scene Dooku is in, the special effects, Jango Fett, it's the first time we get to see Yoda fight...

There is just so much to like.

You know, if I think about it, I can't really say I remember a lot of discourse about Attack Of The Clones. It's pretty influential, it decided the end of a trilogy and spawned two separate Clone Wars cartoons so... It's just a little weird that it's not more beloved.

I've heard some critics call it an overcorrection from The Phantom Menace which I can confidently say might be for the best. It has its problems, it's overly long, Anakin and Padme have as much chemistry as tap water, Dooku shows up 75% into the film and that's a supreme waste of Sir Christopher Lee, Hayden Christensen tries and fails to deliver anything close to a film carrying performance, but considering the god-awful lines he gets you can't really blame him and the film is long, it's so long...

But that all seems kind of trivial.

Do I think it's the best film? I don't know. I'd genuinely say though that it ranks higher than most. It might even be the highlight of the prequel trilogy.

But for now, that's really all I have to say on that. I encourage you to give the film a second look if you haven't in a while. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Next up is Revenge Of The Sith and I'm excited. I think I might even be sad to say goodbye to the prequel trilogy but I'm happy to just be into Star Wars again. We'll see how long that lasts.

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Review: Return Of The Jedi

Return Of The Jedi was the film I feared rewatching the most, it's the one I've built up a fair amount of animosity towards over the years.

But despite all that I think I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

It's still plagued by the same problem as all the original trilogy films, being overlong with flat characters and the Ewoks still test me and the first act is only marginally connected to the core crux of the film as it resolves plot points from the previous movie. Boba Fett goes out kind of like a chump despite how much he's hyped up and there is all kinds of grossness involved with Leia.

But despite all that I really did end up having a good time with it.

I think the speeder scene on the moon of Endor really does still hold up, I love the battle between Luke and Vader and how the film's resolution doesn't rest on simply that might is right but that these two beings driven into conflict have to look deep inside themselves and question their base assumptions about the world.

I was surprised at how hard that beat hits.

This might end up being the most positive review I'm going to do of the series and I'm glad there were still a couple surprises left for me at the end of it all.

Now there are only the prequels, sequels and spin-offs left and for the first time in a while... It feels good to watch Star Wars again.

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Review: Empire Strikes Back

Empire is the awkward middle child of the Original Trilogy and it shows.

My biggest takeaway ended up being how much I started waiting for things to happen. Waiting for Luke's training to be over, waiting for Han and Leia to get to Cloud City, waiting for Boba to finally chase after them...

I think there was supposed to be a more quiet, meditative quality to Empire but I think it's just filled with a lot of dead air.

What I did end up liking was the battle against the walkers on Hoth, I still think it's the best part of the film and once we're in Cloud City, Lando's inclusion is genuinely welcome. I like his character a lot, an old gambler and outlaw who started an operation that might be extra-legal but it put pressure on him to grow and become dependable. That's neat. That's a neat character arc.

Overall I think I found Empire easier to get through, I think less bloat in the narrative compared to A New Hope makes it an easier watch.

More of Han and Leia's garbage romance does mean that I seriously start questioning whether or not the straights are okay but I'm not here for epic romance. Star Wars is bad at romance. To this day the only people who have genuine chemistry in this whole franchise are Obi and Ventress so take that for what it's worth.

I think one of the weaker points of the film is that when you already know the Luke and Vader reveal, it's robbed of a lot of cinematic intrigue. A lot of the beats don't land because they're undercooked and while the actors are trying their best to sell these performances, it's in the service of material that doesn't do them justice. The Original Trilogy seems far better at grand ideas and special effects than it is at quieter character moments.

I did like old as fuck Yoda who is a little loopy. I actually forgot how the prequels and clone wars made him look all wise and serious when Yoda's actually more of a goofy grandfather muppet type. Things that were lost, I guess.

I'm going to wrap it up here, there are more films to go through and I don't want to spend too much time dissecting them. I'm going to restate what I said about A New Hope that there just isn't as much in the original trilogy that sticks out in my mind. The flaws might actually make the prequels more memorable and I think I end up enjoying them more because of that.

Not looking forward to Return of the Jedi though. Never really liked Ewoks. Ugly little toothy dog-bears that they are.

Jawas don't get enough love.

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Review: A New Hope

A New Hope is one of those films I have very little to say about.

It's well made, a classic and it earns its place in the pantheon of must-watch films but if I go purely by my enjoyment of my time with it, I can sincerely say it wasn't as fun or interesting as I'd hoped it to be.

This isn't my first rodeo, I watched A New Hope back as a child and over the years it's been kept fresh in my memory through cultural osmosis but I'd lie if I said it was something I was aching to go back to.

Whereas I'm surprised at how much I ended up enjoying The Phantom Menace upon repeat viewing, A New Hope I was startlingly apathetic towards.

I think a part of it is how some beats just don't connect with me. My particular standout is Luke finding the corpses of his aunt and uncle, a clearly traumatic and life-changing moment... But it's never mentioned save for one moment after it happens. Luke losing the only parental figures he's ever known is treated like getting begrudged permission to leave home. The lightsaber duel between Ben and Vader felt more flaccid and limp than ever. Han Solo's once-charming mischief comes off as boarish and the casual sexism that goes unchallenged kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.

Other problems also crop up, but I'll get to those in a bit. If I had to describe my experience in microcosm it's that partway through I'd just.. Walked away. Seriously, I walked away to go to the bathroom and for 45 minutes just forgot to come back. Perhaps in '78 it was a breath of fresh air for genre films but with my current taste and having lived out two decades of watching sci-fi, it just doesn't feel as monumental as some make it out to be.

Still, I didn't hate the film. It was perfectly watchable. Not a revelatory film experience, actually, the mundanity of it all kind of seeped in and it just felt like I was watching a decent pilot episode for a TV show I had a passing interest in.

The flaws of A New Hope are mundane. They're... Barely worth talking about.

One thing the prequel trilogy does have is flaws worth talking about and I think both as a critic and an audience member I'd prefer a film that has a couple noteworthy flaws than a film that's decently good, perhaps even great but has just very little to leave behind when the credits roll.

Still, I welcome the rest of the films as a chance to re-examine this pop culture giant.

Perhaps I'll rediscover what it is that attracted me to these films in the first place.

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Review: The Phantom Menace

Episode 1 of Star Wars is kind of the holy grail of bad Star Wars movies. Between Jar Jar Binks and overly explained Mido-Chlorians, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone disagreeing that it's bad.

So uh, here's a lukewarm defense of it.

I'm not going to say it isn't flawed or that there aren't major problems. Anakin kind of fails upwards, and despite the majority of the plot hinging on Padme she ends up taking a back seat for most of the film. There are 55 separate wipe transitions, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are clearly the people who matter here but they have to constantly share screen time with unlikeable CGI monstrosities and well... You know. The accents.

There are reasons to dislike this film.

But I was surprised at how much I didn't end up hating it on rewatch. I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought. The stuff that holds up still does. Pod Racing is great, Obi and QG versus Darth Maul is great, in fact any time Obi and QG are on screen together it's a pretty fun ride.

Coming back to anything after a long hiatus is kind of a tough feat and no one really knows what the best way to go about it is. I think The Force Awakens had more success than The Phantom Menace in that regard but it's clear just how many kinks the original trilogy left to iron out, and while The Phantom Menace is definitely not the answer, I do think it was at least a great shot in the arm for the franchise.

It's a little hard to quantify where I'd put it now. It's not a great film but I also don't think it's an unsaveably bad one. A couple edits here and there could easily put The Phantom Menace as one of the best Star Wars films of all time, but personally, the less George Lucas touches Star Wars, the better at this point.

If you haven't seen it, I'd still recommend it, if you haven't seen it in a while, I think you'll be surprised at how much holds up but either way, don't expect it to blow your mind. It's the phantom fucking menace, so, you know.

Prepare for all that entails.

55 wipes, man. Someone needs to bat Lucas's hand from the keyboard.

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Review; Bring Me The Horizon's Count Your Blessings

Count Your Blessings is a mean spirited album which is more intent on trying to emulate the style of The Black Dahlia Murder while slutshaming on 60% of the tracks. There are musical ideas in here that I think are worth exploring, I think the unashamed guitar solos and pick squeals and breakdowns are fun to listen to but lyrically, for, all but three songs, Count Your Blessings really is more about trying to sound like the most annoying teenager on Myspace, with such prize winning lyrics as "Fuck yourself you stupid fucking whore".

That said, the few good tracks on here are very enjoyable. Pray For Plagues, A Lot Like Vegas and Tell Slater Not To Wash His Dick hold up as some of the most enjoyable of the genre and the two instrumental pieces really do improve the pacing of the album, whereas songs  like (I Used To Make Out With Medusa) drag and are just Bring Me The Horizon at their absolute worst. The Hot Topic version of Slipknot's Eyeless you'll either love or hate, and I'm personally fond of the stylistic quirks of Bring Me The Horizon put onto, to be frank, a much better songwriter's track.

It's just a genuine shame that for 70% of it, you're going to be wishing you were listening to Suicide Season instead.

While they've grown a lot in the years, this is an album which while formative, doesn't hold up as well as you'd think. There's better deathcore and there's better Bring Me The Horizon albums out there so playlist the two or three songs you actually end up liking and dump the rest.

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Review: Netflix's You

The first thing I thought at the end of the first episode of Netflix's You was, Oh no, I really like Joe.

And that's awful, but also the point.

Netflix's You is a psychological thriller that will make you forget that it isn't a 2009 Rom Com film right up until it has a big twist to hit you with. Everything is there, the meet-cute the quirky love interest, the whirlwind romance.

Except of course that Joe is human garbage and he deserves nothing less than to fail at every opportunity.

And that's kind of great. Joe is objectively the bad guy but you can't help but root for him. He deserves to fail, he deserves to get hurt, he deserves all the bad things that happen to him but you want him to succeed, you want him to get the girl and that is terrifying.

It's a unique type of horror, it's grounded in the likeability and charm that real-life stalkers often have. Joe seems like a charming, nice, safe guy on the surface. He reads, he's articulate, he's smart, and super cute. But he will also murder in your name.

Just when you think there's no territory for the show to explore, it often pulls out a surprisingly profound aspect of dating, things like falling out of love with a partner. This show about the worst relationship surprisingly has more insightful things to say about a healthy relationship than most shows about relatively healthy couples. It's meditative on the complexities of intertwining your life with another person, while also making you fear very deeply that the person you're with might be a stalker and murderer.

It's subversive, in a strange way. Sera Gamble and Greg Berlanti have done a wonderful job of bringing the central premise of the book to life, while using all the techniques that makes the medium of television so different.

It's not without its flaws though. The gimmick can lean a little too much on Joe's side and there's a fair bit of plot contrivance to tie together some of the story beats. And for as likeable as Joe is, Beck can kind of be the worst. The finale will either work for you or it won't and it does take eleven episodes for Beck to get a clue.

But despite some hiccups, Netflix's You is compelling, gripping, thrilling and terrifying.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go watch something with Penn Badgeley where I don't feel guilty about thirsting over him.

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Crunchyroll Needs To Adapt Or It Will Die

Crunchyroll is a streaming subscription service and content host which brings anime and manga to desperate and lonely weebs like myself, although my weeb power level hasn't quite gone up in a long time.

If you live anywhere other than Japan and you like anime, I'd wager a guess that your main anime source is Crunchyroll (or like, Netflix's paltry selection), or pirating. Not trying to out anyone, but the only other option is expensive imports or bootlegs and I doubt anyone is really doing that.

Now I like Crunchyroll. I like the idea that for an affordable price you can stream seasons of anime and get it at a decent quality with decent subs, and the upload schedule is fair. However, Crunchyroll might have the worst user experience out of all the streaming services I use and honestly, that doesn't bode well. The more I use it, the more feature bare it seems. And that's led me to one conclusion;

Crunchyroll needs to adapt, or it will die.

Any software solution has two parts, the back end and the front end. Back end is the hardcore mechanical stuff, such as the netcode and videoplayback and generally Crunchyroll does alright with that. Crunchyroll works, but it's the front end, the bells and whistles, the user interface that really lets the service down.

For starters, there are web 1.0 sites that are more visually appealing than this eyesore of trying to pass itself off as a design. Websites nowadays look a lot more like applications than interactive word documents and that's just the start of the problems with Crunchyroll.

Here's what Crunchyroll could use:

1. Animated Thumbnails

2. Trailers

3. Original Content

4. A Cleaner Interface

5. Curated suggestions of content on the home page

6. Animations, please, for the love of god, add animations to this website

7. Larger fonts

8. Skip Intro Button

9. Autoplay (At least moving to the next episode of the thing you're watching after 5 seconds)

10. A Continue Watching Tab

11. Dark Mode, Jesus please.

That's just all off the back of my head from different, better video streaming services. I couldn't believe this stuff was missing when it's clearly not that difficult to implement.

But this article is a dime a fucking dozen, everyone has gripes with Crunchyroll for different reasons and I'm not the first asshole to suggest it. Maybe use some of that massive marketing budget that hasn't built up the audience you've wanted.

What I wanna say is that I like anime, I want it to get to more people, I want more people to have access to a good service to use it.

It cannot be that hard to implement that. It just cannot.

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Making (Art) Is Hard Work

Hey, I'm Matt-Dave, and I have released exactly two videogames, written over 100 blog posts, wrote a novel, and recorded 4 demos with a band that broke up.

And those things were all bloody hard to do.

Any personal project is something that's very hard to get off the ground. You're usually solely responsible for it's completion and holding yourself to task is hard. Often, the reward is... Nothing. Perhaps a small audience, perhaps a couple pats on the back, but most of the time you're shouting into the void and hoping someone hears it.

It's hard to make a career and name for yourself off of passion projects, hell, this blog has been going for years now and I couldn't tell you if any actual humans read my blog or if it's just porn bots.

Why do we do the things we do, even if they're difficult, tedious, time consuming and sometimes not even that cathartic?

Well, I crave creative satisfaction. I consider myself something of an artist. I make music, I make games, I write, all that good stuff and I publish a lot of my work online. Sometimes it just doesn't get noticed.

That's okay though.

Making art for the sake of making art is where the true joy in life lies. I wish I could spend my life just doing that. Just writing, just penning blog posts, just making games, just making songs. It's some of the greatest pleasures I've had as a human being and I wish more people could experience those things.

But it takes its toll.

Sometimes you do wonder if it's all worth it, if screaming into the void means you're just yelling at yourself.

I don't know what to do about that.

I do know I'll continue. I'm trying my best to make something out of nothing here and I hope some day it will pay off. In some ways it already has, so we'll see if there's any further return on investment.

All I can say is, finish your passion projects. Don't let them linger.

We all have too many lingering regrets already.

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Evangelion; Shinji, DON'T Get In The Robot (Unless You Want To)

Alright you pathetic soon to be Fanta Orange offspring of Lilith, I watched Evangelion a while back and I have thoughts and opinions and you're going to hear them as sure as Shinji gets in the goddamn robot.

*deep inhale*

So like one method I like to use to understand and establish theme is abstraction, the other being personification. So like, if you had to explain the narrative without the trappings of the diegetic jargon to someone who knows nothing about the work, what would you say it's about, what happens in the story? If the work was a person, what is that person's view on things? So I'm going to use that framework to say Evangelion is actually about the military complex and the emotionally abusive nature of adults in power. Strap in, bitches, we're about to get into our robot moms, and it's gonna be a long ride.

Also spoiler alert but like, fuck it, none of us even understand Eva anyway so like, you only live once, might as well read on.

So Evangelion is about a 14 year old boy named Shinji who is estranged from his cold and distant father who emotionally blackmails him into piloting a monstrous weapon of mass destruction. This WMD operates on the principal that any damage it takes inflicts sympathetic pain onto the pilot and the better you are at piloting it, the more painful it is to use. There's a war going on between two factions with opposing loyalties and goals but ultimately they're actually cut from the same cloth. Shinji's first bout with the enemy leaves him with excruciating pain but he ultimately succeeds. But because he was untrained and underqualified, he causes some collateral damage, and this prompts one of his classmates to punch the shit out of his tiny baby boy face and he goes to live with a stranger who is his handler that plays at being his surrogate mother.
Shinji fights on and the trauma gets so bad that he attempts to run and escape the life. He doesn't get too far or even leaves for very long before the military brings him back to continue his government approved torture sessions.

Anyway he meets his fellow child soldiers and becomes something of a war hero through training and continued victories. One of the fellow child soldiers, Asuka, co-habitates with him and his handler. Asuka proceeds to badmouth and verbally abuse him at every opportunity and he takes it because while it's not validation of his inherent worth as a human being it is brutal honesty rather than obfuscation and the drip feedings of praise, which is the second closest thing Shinji feels to friendship.

As more of the enemy is defeated, and the war takes its toll on the children and cities, the WMDs get more and more out of control. One of Shinji's friends is then selected to pilot one of these WMDS and it goes so awfully that the other pilots are forced to face one of their own in armed combat. Shinji is forced into the fight and is ordered to murder his best friend to clean up the military;s mistake. He maintains that there's a better way and in response they take control of his WMD away from him and they all but murder one of only three friends he truly has.

Shinji quits for real and now that he's disposable the military allows this, so he lives as a citizen for a while. He lives out his days, convinced that being the pilot of a WMD is the only thing that gives him worth, but a disgraced member of the military tells him that it's not his ability to affect change for the better, but his willingness to do so that gives him worth. After his old comrades are defeated and wounded, he chooses to take up arms, but this time the trauma and anger causes him and his WMD to commit the unspeakable and he defiles and eats the body of his enemy.

Now so intwined, the border between him and his weapon have blurred. Shinji's friends try in vain for a long stretch of time to seperate him and the machine but their efforts are in vain. This goes on and the one thing that brings him back is the pleading of his surrogate mother.
Back in the frey, one of Shinji's comrades is murdered and replaced with an identical person, and no one notices or cares until far too late.

Finally, Shinji then meets Kaworu, the last child who will be drafted into this to use the WMDs. Kaworu displays a romantic interest in Shinji. They do a back and forth and Kaworu expresses interest only the sides of Shinji that are separate from him as a pilot. Kaworu then explicitly tells Shinji that he has inherent worth, and that his mere existence makes the world a better place. However, Kaworu has loyalties to the other side, and it is through this knowledge that Shinji finds out the enemy has only been variants of him, that they are all human, and that he has been fighting a war for survival on a world that was taken from other beings who were here first.

Kaworu begs Shinji to kill him so that Shinji and his kind may live on, but the inner turmoil of this wrecks Shinji inside. It lingers for an eternity on Shinji holding Kaworu's fate in his hands, and then finally, Shinji succumbs to Kaworu's wishes and kills the one person who told him that he has inherent worth.

Anyway, the next two episodes are various montages and frankly, it's psuedo-psychology mixed with baby's first philosophy class told over montage that gets stale and easy to tune out fast. It basically ends with Shinji learning that his self worth has to come from within and yadda yadda nothing we don't already know.

End of Evangelion is a mess that throws away the entire show's worth of character building so that there can be a dark joke at the expense of Shinji, or rather of Shinji as the audience surrogate. It kind of smacks of Serenity syndrome, and you can kind of tell that this was something made a while after the conclusion of the main story and the creators didn't really have the best handle on it the world anymore. The giveaway here is that when Shinji and Asuka fight the mass-produced Evangelions, they don't experience sympathetic pain but rather full blown injury transferrence. 

End Of Evangelion is stupid.

Still fun to watch despite being psuedo-psychology and esoteric bullshit.

Major Theme 01: Adults in power are emotionally manipulative!

This is pretty easy from the start, Shinji is convinced to pilot the Eva only after being shown that his dad plans to shove a barely conscious still bleeding classmate into the cockpit and Shinji's only courses of action are to allow this woman to die or get in the robot.
On top of that, Misato *constantly* attacks his masculinity and bravery, Shinji's father drip-feeds him praise and dies a sad and ignoble death admitting that he sees himself in his son and that he keeps his distance out of fear of hurting him, because rather than working on himself and his parenting, Gendo would rather try fuck the world.

Major Theme 02: The military is patriarchal!

Misato and Ritsuko at one point go to a military conference and in more ways than one we have a display of the sexism of military leaders. Ritsuko's is talked down upon and the very idea of using Eva units is brought into question. Birthed from Lilith and literally containing the soul of a woman, the Evas are seen as inferior and incompatible with the military and the way it runs.
Major props for Misato's fuck you guys, I'm gonna get in the damn robot myself moment.
Gendo, as the resident military complex also just... Abuses women. He trivializes their pain, he treats them as disposable... Risuko's mother died and he immortalized her in computer form as something reduced literally down to roles which serve him, as a mother, woman, and scientist. 

Major Theme 03: Your worth is inherent and not determined by what you are, or what you do

Self evident but the Kaworu stuff to me is the most powerful. Eva says something else here as well, and this is major theme four.

Major Theme 04: Our empathy, our sensitivity, those are our biggest strengths

Kaworu's reaffirmation that the best parts of Shinji are his sensitivity, and his large fragile heart. His final words even echo something really beautiful, "My life was made meaningful because of you." Our sensitivity, our empathy... It is our connection. And while we might have to guard our fragile hearts, what makes living meaningful is to continue to love and value each other. The pain should not drive is to isolation, only to find ways of coexisting without hurting one another.

I think that, is ultimately what Evangelion is about. I think the show speaks from the experience of a man who was very deeply depressed but I also think it isn't really about living with depression. I think it's about living past depression, living despite pain, and struggling to find a way to coexist without causing others pain.

And also, it's about knowing. Knowing that getting in the robot should ultimately be Shinji's choice, and that yelling at him to get in the robot is selfish and cruel. Man, was ultimately the most cruel angel.
And that, is my thesis.

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Support Women's Right To Choose, You Coward

I'm a little late and I don't really know if this counts as a platform but here we go;

Abortion bills are almost always used to control women. But also yes, the supporters thereof actually do care about abortion, it's just one of their favourite ways to control women because their morals can drive their own outrage.

There are plenty of arguments to be made for a pro-choice stance but there are people better at making those arguments so I'm just going to say this about the anti-choice side;

It's not only old white men.

A popular talking point from intersectional feminist circles is that white women are just as guilty of electing Trump into office. While it's mostly old white men who sign, write and pass these bills, they're pandering as much to a supporting base of conservative women as they are to white men.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that old white men in power are blameless because, no, they certainly have to shoulder a lot of the responsibility but we often miss the bigger picture, and that's that there are enough women out there who empathize more with a fetus than with fellow women and their opinions are the ones that the men in power will consider, even if less so than with their fellow men.

And yeah, it is up to leftist men to signal boost, support and vocalize the hell out of our stance on this. We have enough clout and most of us have at least some form of platform. Now is the time to make your voices heard in solidarity with women, especially if it's unpopular in your circle because that's probably who needs to hear it the most.

Also, tell all your friends to go watch or read The Handmaids Tale. There's a piece of media that'll have a profound effect on your worldview and yeah, it's the kind of  fucked up thing that hits a little too close to home right now and maybe that's exactly what we need, a reminder of how bad things can get so we know to preemptively prevent things from ever reaching that point.

In conclusion, yeah, I'm with the women on this point, and not just with women, with trans men, NBs and anyone else who has a uterus. I'm not okay with the regulation of their bodies and it frightens me to see how many people are okay with that. This is not okay, this is not normal, we shouldn't let it be.

We're supposed to be better than that, right?

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Review; Ratchet And Clank (2002)

The original Ratchet and Clank is the perfect midpoint between 3D platformer and third person shooter.

And that's not the greatest thing.

While sequels would refine how to better blend fast paced shooting with clever platforming, this first installment manages to execute on the platforming well enough but drops the ball in the shooter mechanics, with a serious aversion to adopting a twin stick layout. That's not to say all shooter games would benefit from a twin stick layout but Ratchet and Clank 2002 definitely would.

It's hard for me to recommend anyone play the game to completion. There's a stealth section near the end that unceremoniously marks the point where the game stops being fun. Going back to Veldin for the endgame is especially more of a chore than a victory lap. And while the weapon selection is too large to fit inside your quick select, there's very little flow and synergy between Ratchet's arsenal. Your tactical options are severely limited and it leaves you wanting for even the basics of any respectable shooter's weapon selection. If nothing else, just one sniper weapon. Just one.

You'll also find that the bolt requirements will suddenly skyrocket in the mid to end game and you'll go from comfortably growing your arsenal to feeling like you have far too much money for just ammo and far too little to buy anything meaningful, with the best solution being the treasure hunter gadget you can acquire. It left me wishing for some sort of combat arena or a series of platforming gauntlets to play for money, and I'd even accept the asinine Quark minigames from the third game.

And no, hoverboard racing does not count. You make nearly nothing from it.

While the story is actually kind of a highlight and there are gags that are genuinely funny, it's perfectly okay to give this one a miss. Overall it's perhaps the worst of the PS2 games and I'd recommend any game that comes after just before it, but there's still fun to be had if you can grit your teeth through a frustrating end game.

If you must, I would recommend playing it at least for long enough to acquire the employee discount and most of the weapons, sans the more expensive ones.

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Since When Did Fascists Start Liking Harry Potter?

Hey, you know what I love? Harry Potter.

Like, every couple years I watch every movie in a marathon because those were some of my first experiences with the artistry of cinema, rather than the junkfood movies I'd thought were the ceiling. I love the theme song so much it makes me feel a warmth in my chest.

And I still respect the hell out of JK Rowling, for her achievements. She's done a ton of charity work, has given more money to charity than even most millionaires will see and her story as a writer inspires me to try harder with my writing.

However, recently it's been hard. I don't agree with the a lot of the choices she's made lately, and she's disappointed me plenty. And I recognize the tough position she must be in, but I think that power and influence comes with responsibility and one has to try act as ethically as possible.

I don't want this to get too political, and I get that people wanna have a good laugh, but there's this icky feeling I get when I see Rowling criticized for Hermoine's stage play casting with the same fevor as she gets criticized for the queerbaiting stuff. There's an icky feeling I get when I see people call details about Dumbledore's sex life gross, but no one batting an eye about Voldermort's secret daughter. I get an icky feeling when people use a mocked up tweet to criticize JK Rowling when she hasn't actually said anything as egregious as the 'wizard poop' retcon. There's an icky feeling I get when I see criticism for JK Rowling weaponized towards the goal of the radicalization of people who just wanna see themselves represented in the work.

To that end, I just wanna say, be careful when you're disappointed to be a little more scrutinizing? I'm afraid for the future. I'm afraid that there's going to be a co-opting of the discourse by radicalized individuals. I'm afraid that this thing I loved when I was a kid is going to be hard to enjoy because we stopped talking about how we felt when we first read/watched it but instead are caught up in stuff that we know we shouldn't care about, but also can't avoid.

Hey, you know what I like? Harry Potter. You wanna talk about how much you like Harry Potter? I think you should. You wanna talk about what you dislike about Harry Potter? I think you should.

I just don't think you should spend too much time dog piling on JK Rowling. Not accusing you personally of anything, but when you've dog piled on top of someone, sometimes it's hard to see that the people you're dog piling with are radicalized towards rhetoric that you yourself find abhorrent.

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Review: Shadow The Hedgehog (2005)

Remember when you were a kid and you had a lot of angst and you went through this edgy period that you now cringe at as an adult?

Shadow The Hedgehog is the ill-conceived pseudo sequel to Sonic Heroes and Adventure 2, as well as one of the last games Yuji Naka worked on before leaving Sonic Team and Sega.

Before we go any further, I’d like to posit that by ill-conceived I don’t mean that it was a bad idea to make the game, just that the concept was under-developed, much like Shadow’s character. A spin-off game based off a then-popular character could have been a booster shot that sparked new life and interest in the franchise. And Shadow was the ideal candidate. But alas, instead, we now live in the timeline where Shadow The Hedgehog and Sonic ’06 were released just one year apart.

To start at the top, progression through the narrative of the game is needlessly complex for how simple it really is. Shadow, who still doesn’t have his memories back, sees an invasion attempt happening and from there he goes on a quest to learn about his own past. After some soul searching, Shadow comes to a conclusion about who he is and what he feels his role in the world is.

And to the game’s credit, I actually like the mechanical structuring of morality. Rather than being a text prompt, you have to actively help people to be good, serve Black Doom in order to be evil or kind of just run past everything. The actual act of being good or bad usually boils down to annoying quests where you have to collect or destroy X amount of things for Y character, but I like the idea more than the implementation.

And yeah, you are going to have the most fun running past everything because the core issue that lies in the heart of Shadow The Hedgehog is that it’s kind of just a mediocre Sonic game with little pieces of Devil May Cry combat attached. Shadow has the Venom problem where he exists not as a character foil to the hero, but as a shadow-self, a dark doppelganger, a personified version of the path not taken. In gameplay, that amounts to Shadow being a texture swap with a bad attitude. Whereas a game based on Tails might include more flight based platforming puzzles and a game based on Knuckles would deal more with gliding, Shadow kind of boils down to being more of an aesthetic choice. But unlike in Adventure 2, Shadow’s moveset here is so weak. Hand to hand combat is so tacked on that if you tug on it too hard, it will fall off. The spindash is an actual joke. The homing attack at least works alright, but it’s not quite the powerhouse that some weapons are.

Shadow’s chaos powers are woefully under-utilized. Filling either the hero or dark bar gives you the ability to either use Chaos Control or Chaos Blast, but neither are more useful than just the passive bonus of having unlimited ammo with your currently equipped weapon. Furthermore, Chaos Control, which you build up doing “heroic” things actually fundamentally clashes with the collectathon structure of Hero missions, as you whiz by all of the objectives. Chaos Blast is kind of just a screen nuke, but it doesn’t do as much damage as the flashy visuals would suggest. Like, Sonic Heroes managed to make the ability halfway useful, here it just feels like a gimped version of the team attack.

The music is… Actually enjoyable, in a cheesy Nu Metal kind of way. Almost Dead is actually a banger, in a way that only try-hard 2000s Rob Zombie sound-alikes can be. The music probably gets closer to that Devil May Cry aesthetic the game is trying to chase.

And what’s kind of baffling is that there already is a version of this game that works; It’s called Ratchet and Clank. And although Ratchet and Clank is a lot slower, it executes the hybrid of third person shooting and platforming much more eloquently. This was the game Shadow The Hedgehog should probably have tried to imitate.

Final thoughts; this is not a game one plays with a completionist mindset, unless you really like Westopolis, because getting all the endings means playing Westopolis 10 times. The game is also trying way too hard, I mean, just listen to these menu sound effects. I remember having some fun with the multiplayer, but it’s entirely skippable.

And my last point is this; The middle of the road ending which you get from going off and doing your own thing while the plot happens at you is perhaps the only ending that has any real narrative stakes to it. You get to the end and Shadow concludes that he is an android, built to replace the Shadow that died in Adventure 2. He doesn’t remember anything because he physically never experienced those things. And this would have been kind of a great move to pull and I kind of wish this was the canon ending. See, as an Android, there’s a lot more room for Shadow and Omega to do some buddy cop stuff if they were both Eggman’s creations who kind of hate their creator. There’d be room for Shadow to have a narrative arc in future games where he tries to find his place in the world as the lookalike of the martyred Shadow in Adventure 2. Shadow would actually have a reason to explore intense rage as a being not really programmed with a lot of empathy, while trying to live up to the legacy of the original Shadow could be a motivation for Shadow to actually develop that empathy. And the on and off again rivalry between Shadow and Sonic would have extra dramatic stakes as Shadow now not only wants to prove that he’s better than Sonic, but it’s also a battle to prove that he isn’t just a shadow of Shadow the hedgehog.

The canon ending has Shadow discover he’s part alien and re-learning the lessons he already learned in Heroes and Adventure 2, and if that part alien thing comes out of left field and seems tacked on and pointless, don’t worry, because Sega all but forgets it ever happened.

All Hail Shadow, indeed.

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As It Turns Out, DC's Titans Is Pretty Good

I was not rooting for this show. DC's Titans is the kind of ill-conceived premise that you'd think would leave a show dead-on-arrival. The marketing for this thing promised a surreal, overly gritty and superficially mature show with all the trappings that come with it.

Except DC's Titans is actually kind of good?

Trust me, I was the last person to expect something like that to happen. I saw the trailers, the same as you did and when Robin dropped the f-bomb and put some disrespect on Batman's name I was ready to hate-watch this thing as it turned into a glorious edgelord nightmare.

Turns out that I got a pretty great version of the Doom Patrol in the sneakiest backdoor pilot I've seen in a while, along with some pretty cathartic confrontations between Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. Hawk and Dove also turned out to be characters I unironically love and oh, man Wonder Girl? Even Wonder Girl was lovable. And I thought I was going to hate Starfire but Anna Diop was kind of acting circles around the rest of the cast and doing it while wearing actual fashion crimes.

It's not all good.

The effects can look cheap, poor Anna Diop's costuming suffers, the show dips into some adorable levels of edginess, Raven's character is kind of incoherent and there are as many gorgeous shots as there are moments of colour palette drab.

But that's as much as I can say. As it turns out, DC's Titans might not be the most faithful to the source material and it sure doesn't have a lot of respect for convention but maybe that's the best part about it. In a lot of ways, it is the superficially mature show that the marketing promised but in a lot of others, it's a clever new spin on a gritty group of characters dealing with a violent world while wearing superhero masks. For all its faults, DC's Titans is actually one of the better versions of the Teen Titans. It's not gonna compete with your nostalgia for the 2003 show but you'd be surprised how well the Teen Titans work when filtered through the lens of Watchmen.

Hard recommend. It might not be for everyone but you'll probably be surprised at how much this is probably for you.

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It's Not A Phase, Dad! Also, I Didn't Like Amo.

The year is 2019 and had anyone told me I'd be writing about Bring Me The Horizon's new album I'd have hugged them with glee, just knowing the album would be worth writing about.

Now I'm decidedly less psyched.

For what it's worth, I don't hate the album. I think it's great that they're experimenting with new sounds and trying new things. I can think of at least 3 tracks that I love and I'd be damn excited to hear them live if these beautiful idiots ever decide to come to my side of the pond. I'm still a Bring Me The Horizon fan.

I won't say that it was the album I wanted, and it still remains to be seen if it'll grow on me.

That said, the discourse around this thing has gotten me feeling an entirely different way, and that's not helped by the glib tone that Amo can take about not being a metal record. If anything, I wish there was less "sorry, we're not metal, silly scene kids are just mad we aren't" there. I kind of wish they hadn't addressed it at all, because it's probably going to vastly diminish the staying power when the eventual "we're going back to our roots" announcement comes.

And that's just the thing, ain't it?

I don't think this one will have staying power. But now I've gotta deal with a bunch of jerk-offs calling me closed minded because I didn't love a pop album, which infuriates me to no end because it's not that I don't like pop albums, I just didn't really like this pop album. And not even that I didn't like any of it, just that I found a good 60% of it to be a kind of derivative and forgettable. And of that 60% there's bits I actually do like, a part of me just wishes those bits were on a better record. I knew what was coming, hell,  I wanted an entire album's worth of songs as good as Follow You but I didn't get that. Sugar, Honey, Ice and Tea isn't just the name of one of the songs.

Which leaves me in the precarious position of being one of the few jerk-offs who gave this record a chance and didn't actually like it.

And what do I say to that?

Well, for starters, let me just dislike the album, for God's sake. A band is a brand and music is a product and if I don't like what you're selling please stop telling me that it's only because I like spending my money on one thing, maybe I just think what you're selling is a little shit? It didn't make me hopeful for the future of electropop like Lorde's Pure Heroine, it didn't intrigue me like Melanie Martinez's Cry Baby and it for damn sure didn't make me feel what Sam Smith makes me feel. Shit, Dua Lipa's New Rules has been stuck in my head for so long it may never leave. Now, Now released an album so thematically coherent that I'll die before I can finish counting off all the things I love about it. I like pop. I like a whole lot of pop. It's why I keep buying Punk Goes Pop records because nothing makes me happier than my favourite bands covering my favourite pop songs.

Amo kind of just came and went while I had to try very hard not to roll my eyes at it.

And yeah, I'm going to say that I'm disappointed that Bring Me isn't releasing metalcore but that started in 2015 and I've had plenty bigger disappointments since. I wanted to like Amo, hell, the lead singles got me really hyped for the album. But once it landed, once I took the whole thing in from start to end, it's just an underwhelming "meh". All I can really think was that, for an album trying so hard to be experimental, it sure ended up being plain and forgettable.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to hate on it. Quite frankly I expect it to get beaten up any minute now once the true genre warriors arrive. And they will, and I'll roll my eyes at them too. Bring Me wasn't this bastion of greatness in their Deathcore days, in fact, This Is What The Edge Of Your Seat Is Made For is such pure auditory white noise that after all these years I still can't tell you a damn notable thing about it. Count Your Blessings I'll still go in for, even if I think half of that record is also just a structureless mess, but the songs I like from CYB I at least love enough to give those songs a regular listening to.

Bring Me doesn't owe us a metal album, they don't even owe us a radio rock album. They can do whatever they want. But that doesn't mean I have to like what they put out. I don't owe them my undying love just because they released my favourite album in 2013, and I wish the kids who like Oli more for his haircut would get off my case about it.

But to those jackasses who still cling to the deathcore phase, guys, it's okay for a band to undergo a stylistic change. Usually it's better when that change is actually good, see Paramore's After Laughter for more, but I understand that people who make this music might get tired of making it. I'd argue that there's still much more room to explore the genre and recent interviews with Oli shows how deliriously out of touch he is with the scene, seriously, I get time is limited but music is your bread and butter man, you're supposed to be keeping your ear to the ground so you don't become an irrelevant dinosaur like Gene Simmons is trying his best to be.

But seriously, it's okay for bands to change. Not all change is growth but it's alright, sometimes we need to move sideways to move forward.

Just don't expect me to like it.

Also, there's a certain "grow up emo kid" attitude in the discourse, and to that I say, fuck off? No apologies, just, fuck off, you don't know what you're talking about, please stop letting your tastes be defined by the music you think you should like as an adult and have a little childish, unironic appreciation for stuff that's a little silly but at least has some energy to it. Like, when did we grow old, man? You can like the same albums you liked ten years ago, it's okay, it's not a phase, Dad! Just watch less cringe-culture vids and get off your soapbox.

And I'll be doing just that. That sure was a long way to say, the album was fine but not for me and I just wanna be left alone to listen to Avalanche for the 340th time as I cry alone in the shower.

See you next... Month? Or whenever I put the next one out. Sorry. Maybe I need flex tape to fix my upload schedule.

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Thank You For The Lessons, 2018

2018 marks my most productive year as a blogger. I wrote more posts than any of the years before and I wrote my most popular posts.

It's been a tough year, and that's fair. All the other years were tough but they made me stronger, and surviving them has shown me that I can take huge blows and still get back up. I've also shown myself that I'm capable. I recorded new music, released a video game and finished a 30 Day Blog Challenge (albeit in more than 30 Days.). I wrote 20 000 words in November and I fell in love and well...

I don't know what more I could have asked for.

I have no idea what 2019 will bring but I do know that as long as there is at least one view on my post, then I'll continue to write.

Do I have plans? Oh, hell yes, I definitely do. Do I have goals? Most certainly. Am I aiming to be a better person, a harder worker, and a better writer? One hundred percent.

But I also aim to be kind to myself and work at my own pace. If I'm given the space, time and care, I know I can do great things. If I handle myself correctly if I apply the right principles and if I take care of myself well, then I know I can conquer the whole world.

So here we are, the first one of 2019.

There's not much else to say. Happy New Year, and hope you had a good holiday.

Ciao for now. And thank you for the lessons, 2018.

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