Jordan Maynor's Homepage - Blog Posts

2026-05-06 Roblox is a Big Lie

2026-05-04T00:00:00.000Z

I'm tired of holding my silence. I think Roblox may be a Big Lie. Let me explain. (This is in regards to some recent headline I saw about this supposed game. Something to do with age verification.)

I'm a man in my 30s. Thus, I've no real connection to Roblox. And no desire to. But...I occasionally will hear about it and it just seems...odd. It feels like every time I do hear something about Roblox, its existence becomes a little more mystical and exaggerated. Like at first it was just some random game. But it feels like it has become progressively larger, a lie too absurd for people not to believe. So, I've no idea what a Roblox is. What it looks like. What it's purpose is. But I'm told by my advisors that not only does this game exist, not only is its influence purportedly enormous, that its players number in the millions. But I'm also lead to believe that it has been around for nigh on two decades now? Longer than Minecraft?!

I find this difficult to swallow. I don't pretend to know absolutely everything going on in gaming. But as a pretty standard person who grew up with video games, I like to think I'm reasonably familiar with most of the big things out there. The cultural behemoths. Like, I've never been a sports guy. But I knew people that played them. Could identify such a thing were I to see it. I didn't have to own an Xbox to know a Master Chief. There's a certain minimal level of cultural osmosis that everything radiates once it reaches a certain height. Where you are made to know all about it whether you'd like to or not. In the grand lake of mud that is the cosmos, in its limitless span of time that we have endured, I think most all of us that do the vidja game have been exposed to just about everything there is on that wicked mistress that is YouTube. That I could not pull from the depths of my mind an iota of information about Roblox seems deeply suspicious. How? How could I regularly be exposed to gaming Youtube for 20+ years now and never see a single Roblox? It seems impossible.

It's the numbers specifically that I question. Because there are obviously a countably infinite number of games out there that I have zero real knowledge of. Who could know everything? But again, I fall back on millions. Millions of people are playing this Roblox? It's like a...platform? That it just fully does everything and is a nation unto itself? Something ubiquitous? And every child in the country is and has been playing it for years? And I've never seen a single actual second of footage? I don't know a single person who has played it! No! It's absurd on the face of it. I would fully accept that such a game exists but I cannot believe that it's been around for as long as it supposedly has, and has had zero breakthrough. It must then be a lie. Something too ridiculous to be believed. Why this lie has been told, I do not know. What nefarious purpose it is for I could only guess at. The shadowy Roblox cabals are about and their intent may be heinous.

Now, of course I hear you say. "Jordan...what in the fuck are you even talking about? It is a video game. You could easily verify it is real by...looking it up. You have ~~Google~~ Kagi. If you were really feeling enterprising, you could download it and put all doubts to rest." No, says the man in Washington. No, says the man in the Vatican. No, says the man in Moscow. Say no, my brothers and sisters. Say no to big lies. Do not believe your lying eyes and ears. I do not believe in a Roblox and neither should you.

2026-03-26 Let the lore die. Kill it, if you have to.

2026-03-27T00:00:00.000Z

We need to put something in the water supply that makes the children stop caring about lore. Children are far and away the worst about it, but it's a debilitating illness that infects the young and old alike and I hate it. I'm so tired of people yearning to have the most utterly inane bullshit explained to them. There's this whole desire (having partially already been lampshaded by us vis-à-vis: "What's the looorrree?") to want to know all the lore about some world, some property, some movie, some game. Some whatever. And it's always always such a wrong and terrible thought process. Kill the part of you that wants everything to have an index and for that to somehow be the most crucial part of the book.

This rant was precipitated by one of my favored podcasts where they talk about horror movies and stuff finally going over Alien. They brought up the above water supply plan that I happily cosign. And they have the correct opinion that like literally everything after Aliens is as best totally misguided because of the franchise's incessant need to explain everything. To have lore. The space jockey is So Fucking Good! Literally no one on this cursed Earth needed the space jockey to be explained. It shouldn't be. It is so much better as an inexplicable thing that is deeply evocative, but largely unknown. There is some enormous alien creature, so incredibly old that its body has completely fossilized into its surroundings. Its rib cage has been violently burst outwards by something. And its ship is infested with strange leathery eggs. Done. Ship it. You fucking got it, brother. Immediately aced the test. Let's lock that in and go home.

But no...we gotta know what the space jockey is. We gotta know its birthplace, its mother's maiden name. What it had for breakfast that morning. And there are so so many people that eat this shit up. They fly to YouTube to have some dipshit drone on about the world of Alien to them for 5 hours, going over every little intricate detail. Disgusting! Zero media literacy! You fail! I do suspect there is an inverse relationship between someone's media literacy and their autistic-like interest in lore as an abstract concept. That lore unto itself is an unalloyed good.

This rant isn't specifically about Alien. It's just a very easy punching bag. But to give a counter-example. Disco Elysium is the best. Every interaction you have in the game is a vignette into a much wider world. Each conversation suggests a dozen other interesting ideas. That world of Elysium is so good and compelling. Literally at no point have I felt any desire to watch some "Disco Elysium Lore EXPLAINED" video which I have no doubt proliferates YouTube. Why in the fuck would you? I do not look at the Mona Lisa and get sad that the frame is looking at Mona Lisa. I don't wish that I could make the canvas bigger so we could see more of the landscape. It's just such a gross misunderstanding of what art even is. The process of making it. The choice of where to look. The artist is showing us something. Do you think maybe perhaps it's purposeful that we are not shown everything, but only what they have chosen to highlight? These lore fuckers would insist that Caravaggio stop making everything so dark because they'd like to see what's going on in the background. Incapable of parsing the fact that what we are being shown is the thing that is important.

Take Tolkien as an example. The literal Father of Worldbuilding. He loved it and he wrote extensively on all the lore of his little world. But that was for him. Tolkien did not publish the Silmarillion...he published Lord of the Rings. Because Lord of the Rings is the story. It's the point of the whole enterprise. The Fellowship's journey gives us countless examples of the lore of the wider world. So many songs...but the core of that story is Frodo. It's the One Ring. Of the mountain of lore Tolkien wrote to support his world, he chose to set the story at the end of his world. He chose for the lens we view Middle-Earth through to be the end of the fantasy and the beginning of the age of man. You can get into the lore of Middle-Earth if you want, but it is not the point of the thing. The point of the thing is the taking of the Ring to Mount Doom and the end of the Enemy. He understood perfectly well that the thing to lead with is Lord of the Rings and not the Silmarillion.

I don't think this hyper-focus on lore is a new development per se. I suspect that there have always been nerds that have an obsessive interest in something but for whatever reason do not parse it as the art it is, but rather as some exercise in archaeology. Something to be explained. A collection of dots waiting to be connected. But I do get the sense that this is getting worse. My guess is that the impulse comes from a combination of a lack of media literacy and an anxiety towards the unknown. The lack of media literacy causing people to interact with the art purely on a surface level. They don't see that an absence of detail can be purposeful. And I think some people just have a weird discomfort towards the unknown.

I don't understand this personally, I don't feel that at all. But it's like they're sat down at a fun little puppet show. And when it starts, they look at the little puppets and they scream. They get up and out of their seat. They run up to the stage and point at the puppets, screaming "What is this! What is this! How is this working? I don't get it! Where are the people? Is there any people?!" They then glance down and see the shocked faces of the puppeteers gazing up at them from below the stage. And this straw man I've conjured returns to their seat, turns to their friend and with a shit-eating grin says "You wanna know how it actually works?" These are your Freddies Fazbear lovers. Your Cinema Sins-ers. I don't understand them and I want them to be corralled somewhere off of the internet for their safety and ours.

I've seen that I am not the only person who wonders if media literacy is genuinely decreasing. I've seen it discussed all over. And I think it's worth genuinely getting into. Because the internet consuming the world does mean that you always need to keep in mind the possibility that nothing has changed. That you're just being exposed to morons who would not have previously had a comments section they can gleefully show their asses on. They've always been here, they just didn't necessarily have a platform. I'd be curious to see if there's been any actual studies on media literacy. It's a fairly abstract concept, difficult to pin down. Because you're largely just testing for how observant someone is and how well they can apply previously gained knowledge to new material.

My one thought on how this may genuinely be getting worse is I do feel basically everyone has been on the internet for at least 10+ years. And it feels like critical discussion has plummeted since 2016 or so. I used to frequent Reddit all the time for TV discussion. Just various shows that I was watching. They all had a subreddit that did post-episode discussions. And I just reached a point of frustration a couple of years ago. Where I was getting absolutely nothing out of it. I felt like I was seeing more and more examples of people just...not seeing what was on their screen. Very surface-level "Why did character do X?" To have someone exasperatedly reply "Because {thing that happened two seconds prior}..." So it feels to me that there was a time where we were all in the internet and things were fine. But then things started to get worse. So it doesn't seem like the answer is purely the internet. Though I don't doubt that it plays a part. I'd say it's the phones but this shit is all over the gaming world and I dunno how people could en masse both hold a controller/keyboard and mouse whilst also scrolling on their phones. So I dunno. But it worrries and angers me.

2025-12-22 YouTube Retrospective Year 5

2025-12-22T00:00:00.000Z

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future...

Games covered:

The year of "What if I just played good games?". Specifically was going for best games of all time. I haven't been able to cover nearly as many games as I would have liked to. Owing to the elephant in the room that is Fallout 4 taking 1000 years to complete. So I think it's very likely that this theme is gonna spill over into 2026. Oh darn. Truly we suffer.

The whole endeavor has made me truly exhausted by mediocrity. There was already a pretty strong barrier in place in terms of games I played. I pretty much never have played something on the channel that I wasn't already fairly certain I would enjoy. But this has really strengthened my opinions on not even bothering with mediocrity. There just isn't enough time for it. Why even bother? Play the greats! Play the critically acclaimed! Play the special little indies aimed right for your heart! Stop playing garbage. I can't say there's much I've played in the channel that I would say is garbage. There's one or two from years ago that I would say are "fine". But that's about the worst I have to say.

But on the other hand, I Iove the sheer cultural capital that I've gained. There was so much I was missing out on it by not knowing Resident Evil. Or Doom. System Shock as well. So I definitely intend on filling out some more cultural blindspots I've got. There was nothing I covered this year that was not great.

I think I'll talk more about my experiences with Total War next year since I'm not that far into it yet to have an informed opinion. I will say that I'm not having a terrible time. My general plan is to finish up Doom Eternal. When I do, I think I may go against the grain and do a double feature of Rome: Total War until I finish that series. Given as of this writing I seem to be getting nowhere fast. I started running the two series at once schedule several years ago. I did that for a couple reasons. The viewer tulpa in my head is a somewhat consistent viewer. Maybe they like me well enough, but I occasionally play something they don't like and so they'll skip a series every however often. So the idea of going between two series is that it adds a little variety. Both for the viewer as well as for myself. There are times where I'm really into one of the games I'm playing and the other not so much. Having two I can go back and forth on keeps things fresh. But in the interest of the Total War campaign not taking forever, it may be worth just doing some overtime with it.

I think once I'm done with Rome, I'll take a short break before beginning the next series (which I anticipate to be System Shock 2. Not yet sure what will be in the other slot. Likely another I had planned in the best of all time group of games. Deus Ex has been sitting there. There's also several shorter indies that have been on my radar, so may start opening up the borders again.) But the reason I want to take a break is I've been strongly considering redoing my computer setup as a Linux system. I've used Linux in some capacity for years. I briefly had it going on my main gaming PC. But there were enough times where it interfered with multiplayer stuff in some capacity that I just bit the bullet and moved to Windows 11. Microsoft has been pissing me off, however. I think their system is garbage and gets worse with every update. I'm tired of Copilot. I'm tired of the nagging. I'm tired of ads in my operating system (beyond unacceptable). I'm tired of them purposefully reverting changes I make to settings on updates. They're a disgusting and evil company that anyone working at should be ashamed to participate in. A tiger cannot change its stripes.

So I may be at the point where small difficulties with multiplayer are an "I don't really give a shit" sort of situation. Can't play a game others want to because the devs want to install a rootkit in my computer that I own? Sucks. Too bad. And Valve massively improving the overall Linux experience as it relates to steam games gives me a lot of reason to want to make the move and make it permanent. If I do end up making that move I'll need some room to get everything situated on the other side in terms of recording and video editing and all that. Gotta relearn some things and get programs set up and tested. So, easier to to just do a pause where no one's expecting a video instead of trying to record ahead and make it seamless if I do run into issues. This enterprise ain't that important. The trains don't need to run on time.

Planning on using Arch, btw.

2025-12-18 A Game That Is A Game

2025-12-18T00:00:00.000Z

There's a phrase that I've used a couple times recently that I keep returning to. "A game that is a game." Or, "games that are games". I don't think I got it from anywhere, and I feel it sort of cuts to the heart of things. Over the last year or so I've been let's playing exclusively some of the best games of all time. We've been doing Resident Evil, we've been doing some Silent Hill, SHODAN is around, Doomguy has come to play. One effect of that is that my tolerance for bullshit has really plummeted. In much the same way that Twin Peaks made me look at the the rest of TV with a scornful eye. I have never really enjoyed the trash that modern games are. The skins, the loot boxes, the DLCs, the everything. But I was a lot more willing to look past it if I felt there was some nugget of gold worth taking a look at. That's really starting to no longer be the case.

When I say a game that is a game, what do I mean? I feel it's largely self-explanatory. The sort of thing you can say and people around will nod their heads, immediately getting what you're going for. But to belabor the point. A game that is a game is a game where you purchase it, you play it, it is video game and nothing else, and it is enjoyed and then put away. The gacha trash that are glorified slot machines are about the farthest away you can get from a game that is a game, to demonstrate the opposite. Because those are games that are slot machines. A game that is a game has no bullshit. It is a video game that you play and enjoy, it is home-grown, organic, free of impurities or sulfates.

Any game with an online component has a very strong attractor force away from pure game-is-a-gamism. It is possible, but it's much rarer. I would put forward Journey as an exemplar. That silly lil indie game from forever ago where you're a scarf fella and can run into other players. No bullshit is present. I don't know that you need to be that pure uncut indie to pass the game that is a game test. But I do struggle to come up with examples. Pretty much the majority of modern online games do not pass this test. And they fail it pretty hard. Even in games that I would largely say that I enjoy. I guess I would wheel out a Warframe perhaps to give an example of something I kind of sort of enjoy but most certainly is not a game that is a game. If there is ever an asterisk to me recommending a game to someone, that's an immediate failure. There should be no asterisks.

But why am I being so hard on games? We can't all be perfect, right? Well no, but we do have a pretty large number of games that are perfect or nearing perfection. So why are we wasting time playing games that are really far from that perfection? You do not have enough time in your life to play all the games that you would love. If you completely swore off trash, knowing full well that meant you were cutting off a pretty significant portion of all new games coming out. And you promised yourself that you were only going to play truly magnificent games, you would never run out of them. Too many already exist and enough new ones are coming out that, I promise, you would never run out.

I'd like people to raise their expectations. A frequent refrain I see on the internet is "just let people enjoy what they want". That sounds nice, but it totally misses the real world context. The more successful trash is, the more trash gets made. The more people buy shitty vile garbage lootbox trash, the more companies will put money towards those endeavors. There isn't an infinite pot of money. Only so many games can get made each year. So no, people should not just be allowed to wallow in filth without being openly judged for their poor taste. We are a society. Have some self-respect. These shit multi-million dollar companies are not your friend and they do not need defending. There is so much room for reasonable people to disagree on great games. To have actual conversations on how well they do or do not execute on their themes. Things that could be done to improve them. But it should no be so controversial to say that we can in fact have a low-water mark of acceptability and should not accept lower. Stop buying garbage! Always prioritize games that are games.

2025-06-13 Bless You

2025-06-13T00:00:00.000Z

I'm gonna goddamn say something and literally nobody can stop me! I am breaking my silence! I'm goddamn sick and tired of people saying bless you when I sneeze. I know, it needed to be said, ok. We, frequent sneezers, have been living in the darkness and its time for us to come out into the bright bright day and sneeze freely without fear of repercussion.

Why do people say bless you? What is the point? It doesn't do anything. I don't even understand the idea trying to be transmitted from one human being to another. It is falling on deaf ears. Why do we even need to bring attention to my sneeze? It's not like I'm spewing my disgusting snot-soaked droplets of sickness-infested foulness into the open air. I'm a goddamn good boy and I have, for the vast majority of my life, understood that you are to release your darkness only into the crook of ones elbow. And that's what I'm doing right now. So what right do you have, non-sneezer, to waddle your oh so holier than me self over and bless me in my time of respiratory need? Again, what does saying bless you even do? I didn't ask for the attention. Why are you giving it?

I thing the thing I hate more than just being told bless you is when I'm told it repeatedly. Hey, dipshit. Do you think maybe if I've sneezed 3+ times we can stop this stupid game and just go about our lives? Do you think we could do that? What are you getting out of blessing me? Do you not understand that human being were not meant to fly so high, injected repeatedly with such boundless holy power? Did you not understand the takeaway from the tale of Icarus?

In my house, growing up, we did not say bless you. Because we were semi-rational people that understood there is no point in doing so. Let the sneezer sneeze, ok. Let them exist and take care of themselves. Sneezing is not some life-threatening event. I will be fine, I assure you. Your faux concern is not needed. Rise up, sneezers! Rise up! Cast off the yoke of oppression!

2025-02-12 Illinois State Flags

2025-02-12T00:00:00.000Z

Intro

Illinois might be getting a new state flag! I mean, we probably won't. People almost never vote for a new state flag, because they look at the terrible seal-on-blank-background design and think it's totally amazing how boring and non-symbolic they are. And people just love languishing in mediocrity.

But maybe just maybe. They've got a vote going on right now as of this blog's writing. Anyway, let's go through the redesigns. No particular order.

The Candidates

The Centennial flag. Not a bad design, though something about the alternating blue stars on white background and the white star on blue background I'm not a fan of.

The Sesquicentennial flag. I feel like this is a flag that I shouldn't like, but I do. There's like no symbolism going on. This flag proudly says "We are the 21st state!" and like nothing else. But in general, as will become evident, I don't care for the flags that literally just put an image of Illinois on them. But in this case, the simplified version of our state I really like. It looks a bit like an arrowhead, but still recognizably Illinois. Also the colors are very comfy on this flag. The softer blue in comparison to the more standard dark blue you see on flags.

I don't think I like the middle white ring illusion being created. Also nothing about this flag really screams Illinois to me. If you showed this to someone that had no knowledge of state flags and asked them which state it was, I think it's extremely unlikely they would ever get it.

I feel like if we're just going to put a big I on our flag, you may as well go Sesquicentennial. Also, the way the red stripes on the right terminate at different lengths feels off to me. Not a fan.

Alright, let's get into the Lincoln hate. I don't want Lincoln on our flag. (The crowd gasps, a child screams, several men are heard swearing and cocking shotguns) I love Lincoln, ok. He is the great fucking emancipator. He transformed America into more of the America it was always meant to, and should always have been. And I know the Illinois has claimed him completely. But Illinois...nobody is coming to take him away from you. You don't have to have him everywhere. And I just feel like it's weird to have a historical figure on your flag. So Illinois hasn't done anything notable since having Lincoln? It's just very high school football was my glory days. Also southern Illinois was cut off because we don't matter so fuck this flag.

Simplicity is key with flags. A child should be able to remember and draw it. So I'm fine with this one. I mostly like the colors. The orange in particular. I don't think you see orange on flags too often. This one's almost a little too simple. I enjoy the use of a butterfly, is that saying we are special and precious?

No.

Alright here is my pick. I really love the triple symbol of the violet flower made up of corn kernels, which contain the great gear of industry. Very clever. Love. Also, the use of the gray for the background as opposed to a typical white really brings everything together. I have no doubt in my mind that this design will never ever win. But it can die happy knowing that it was too good for this cruel and hateful world.

The star that is white represents Chicago so get fucked.

This is another one of those "not much symbolism going on here, eh?" flags. I'm gonna go against my grain and say that I would be ok with this one. I think the two blue tones really saves it. I like those bars on the sides. This flag walks up to me and says "I am Illinois." which I suppose is what our flag should do, even if it could stand to be a bit more subtle about it.

Not a fan of the alternating green and white stripes. It feels too busy. I do like the colors used and the overall design. Maybe it would work better if the sun didn't have the white outline? And then make the sun a bit more orangey? You could make it the color of that Monarch butterfly earlier perhaps.

The seal exhausts me. I guess this is better than what we got now. I would laugh my ass off if this is the one that won. Very "we saved the city!" from Spongebob. Yeah I guess you've fixed the wretched seal on blank background design by...adding some stripes to the background. I'm glad we at least got rid of the word Illinois. But we still have dates and the motto since it's all still shit. I fucking hate people just slapping our seal on the flag! Try harder. This does at least feel like it comes from someone who understands that we live in a shit world where our flag is no good. And they saw an opportunity to work within the system to make incremental change. Which is good, I guess. Just makes me sad, though.

I notice a lot of people tried to have something that symbolized Lake Michigan in their flag designs. Are we all aware that it is not in fact named after us and does in fact only touch us at a very small portion? It's just not something I would even think of if I were making a design, but it seems to figure very prominently in people's minds. I have to assume it's the Chicago talking. The Chicagoans are certain that Illinois is a small urban area next to a great big expanse of blue.

Conclusion

I would just like to note that no matter what I've said, literally any of these designs would be better than what we got now and if I'm asked to proper vote on moving to another design I will happily say yes. I want that violet design, but I will never get it. Sesquicentennial is probably my second. Most of the others start tying for third and fourth.

2025-01-17 Dick Laurent Is Dead

2025-01-17T00:00:00.000Z

We knew that it was coming after his emphysema diagnosis. But it still really hurts. It just sucks. David Lynch died yesterday and I don't think the world will ever be the same without him. I've never particularly gotten bent out of shape over celebrity deaths. I didn't know them personally so they're always very far away. But I feel that with Lynch's work, he showed us himself and his thoughts in a way most artists work to their whole lives.

There's little I can say about him that hasn't been said before, or has been said more eloquently. But what I will say is that even though I only came to his filmography in recent years, he rocketed to the top of my list of favorite directors. He saw the world in a different way and it was always a pleasure parsing what it was he was seeing. Much has been said about his films being surreal and inexplicable. But I feel that often misses the point of the thing. Lynch always worked in emotions. How does the scene make you feel? And that has never ever been unclear to me. I felt he was often screaming out his thoughts, if you're just willing to meet him where he is and feel what he feels. His films aren't always puzzles you need to unlock.

His influence will never fade or leave us. It only became more obvious over time, as I saw more of Twin Peaks, his short films, listened to his music...He was and is a titan of creative vision. And the unique blend of the surreal with the everyday that he explored can be seen everywhere now in TV, movies, games.

I am thankful for The Return. I think it truly was a miracle that it was able to be made and gifted to us. Had it been even a year later, I don't think it would have come together as envisioned. So many of the original cast had already gone to the White Lodge. That long drive down the dark road from Odessa to Twin Peaks. Find Laura. The Trinity Test. Judy (whom we won't be talking about). Unbelievable. My favorite Lynch film? Mulholland Drive in the streets, Inland Empire in the sheets.

2024-12-23 Default Apps 2024

2024-12-23T00:00:00.000Z

Inspired by a couple other people I follow doing similar lists around the end of the year, I wanted to write out what all I'm using service and app-wise in my daily tech and media life.

I've been generally trying to self-host more things while also eliminating unneeded apps from my phone and computer. Moreso to save on unnecessary subscriptions, but I also appreciate a simpler setup. Or one that is less prone to corporate whims. So if year-to-year this list substantially changes, I'll write a followup.

Books - Kavita

Browser - Firefox

Code Editor - VS Code

Email - Proton Mail

File Synchronization/Backup - Syncthing

Launcher - Kvaesitso

Movies and TV - Plex

Music - Spotify

Notetaking - Obsidian

Password Manager - Bitwarden

Podcasts - Antennapod

RSS - FreshRSS

Search - Kagi

VPN - Tailscale

Weather - MyRadar

Youtube/Twitch - Grayjay

2024-11-19 YouTube Retrospective Year 4

2025-12-22T00:00:00.000Z

First thing I had published for this blog was a big retrospective on everything I had played on my YouTube channel up until that point. I decided from then on I would be doing a yearly look back so there was less ground to cover. So here goes Retrospective 2, Year 4. (Some fun Final Fantasy SNES naming schemes we could have there.) Let's get into it.

And another year bites the dust. I know this is coming a bit early, it's not remotely December. But I pretty well know what I've got going on for the rest of this year and also I've got plans for what I want to do next year that I'm excited to talk about.

Games covered:

Any time I look back on what all I've played throughout the year, it surprises me. I think "No, that was forever ago, that couldn't have been this year." But there, indeed it is. Looking back, I think this year's theme was Indie with a sprinkling of Survival Horror. Oh and Fallout. Lots and lots of Fallout. Let's cover each of those groups.

Lots of indie this year. I think it's good to have a steady diet of indie games, personally. I start feeling sick if all I play is big AAA behemoths. They can be great, don't get me wrong. But there are certain inalienable aspects that come with having that much money behind them. I feel you frequently lose the singular creative vision that smaller games have the freedom to express. Night in the Woods, Hypnospace, Arcadia, Scarlet Hollow, Golden Idol, Pale, Mundaun, Norco. They all had very clear visions. Not always the best execution, mind you. But creativity in spades. And I was introduced to several studios that I intend on watching, which is always a good feeling. Like discovering a new director whose films you enjoy.

Next, let's talk Fallout. Whoo. I knew I was getting into something with it. But wow, I wasn't expecting it to last as long as it has. I've been having a fine time with it, but I do find myself wishing things were a bit more condensed. I think of the halcyon days of New Vegas. We get in, we have a good time, we get out. Do games need to be 1000 hours long? I really don't think so. I think a powerful exercise in restraint is the editorializing process. You see it in movies a lot more often. You've got an idea, you put a bunch into it. Then you look at the runtime and think "Oh jeezus we can't have a 4 hour movie. Get the scissors, get the scissors!" Gamers seem particularly allergic to things getting cut. Think of the many many cut content videos out there. And I really wish they weren't allergic because the question "Does this need to be in here?" is a powerful one. It lets you cut through an incredible amount of bullshit. I understand that Bethesda wanted to make a forever game. I get that that is their intent. Nearly every facet of the game supports and informs that position. My point is should it have been their intent? Is being a forever game objectively better than not? I don't think so and I believe that a leaner game would have allowed for a greater focus and a better experience overall. Sim Settlements 2 is a life-changing mod though. Has single-handedly raised my opinion of the game overall and the settlement system in particular. I will continue to be very judicious with doing super long series. Even when I enjoy it, as I've been enjoying Fallout, it just takes up so damn much of my time. There's so many things that I want to play and I just do not have the time when enormous behemoths keep clogging the drain. It ends up making me resent the game a bit and that's never ideal.

Finally, let's talk about the survival horror. Earlier in the year I played Tormented Souls off a recommendation from Watch Out for Fireballs!. As the year went on, I ended up wanting to go back in time a bit and see one of the original survival horrors, Silent Hill. I knew Tormented Souls and Signalis both had Silent Hill as one of their inspirations. That and, you know, every horror game ever released since 1999.... Great decision, I really enjoyed both the Silents Hill. That's when an idea came to me. There's a lot of landmark games that I'm familiar with to various degrees (such as Silent Hill or Resident Evil), but have never experienced myself. Why don't I make a whole thing of it?

That's when I got the idea of a theme for games I can play. Which is best/most influential of all time. We've got the technology to play just about any game out there. Why not do some exploring. Unless something came out that I desperately wanted to play, I think for the next year of 2025 I'm gonna stick with the most classic and influential games that I can think of. I want to broaden my gaming palate in much the same way I've done for movies with the AFI Top 100 List. In particular, I want to focus on older best games of all time. No hate against best games that are more recent. But I'm so much more familiar with the recent ones I don't think there's as much to gain by playing them. I think to pick an arbitrary point, I'll likely be focusing on games released anywhere before 2009. Also there's a number of entries past that point that make me roll my eyes. Whereas prior to that, I can generally make an argument for the majority of entries even if it's something that I know I personally wouldn't care for playing. (For clarity on what I'm talking about, I'm using this list as a starting point for putting together a list for the year) Another stipulation, of course, being games that have actually held up. There's plenty that are considered the best, but just haven't held up from the march of time. We don't have to play those. Absolutely no one is forcing me to. I'm also open to remasters. A fresh coat of paint can really help.

But that's my general plan for 2025 when it comes to YouTube stuff. We're going retro and we're gonna be looking at the cream of the crop. I'm excited! To give a couple examples of games I'm talking about and a little look ahead, these are the sorts of things I'm intending on playing.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Resident Evil
Deus Ex
Rome: Total War

2024-11-08 Mr. Smith

2024-11-08T00:00:00.000Z

I have zero interest into going into detail as to why. But recently I had reason to reflect and think about what my ideal candidate for President would be. If I could create a tulpa by speaking them into existence, here they are.

He is very down-to-earth. And also quite funny and affable. I think he comes from the Midwest, he has that sort of charm. He is young, late 30s early 40s at most. He should be traditionally handsome, in like a James Stewart or Fred MacMurray way. He's quite well fit and tall. He has a deep booming voice, also we're going to bring the beard back to the oval office for the first time in like a century. I'd give him a small physical flaw, though. Perhaps he has a chipped front tooth or some such. Something that humanizes him and brings him down to our level. We'll call him John Smith ^[1] for the sake of argument.

Mr. Smith's background is a poorer family. Farmers in the midwest. I'm gonna say Iowa specifically for reasons that are clear to those that understand. Though he also has family that works in the auto industry in the rust belt. So he can talk to those sensibilities. When asked if he's religious he says he was raised Christian though he doesn't go to church too often. He likes going for the Holidays though to see family. Though he admits Halloween is his favorite holiday. We swiftly move along and do not examine his position on religion any closer.

Actually, when the primary happens I want the Democrats to go full smoke-filled room and prop him up, running a couple nobody goons that make him look great and sail to an easy win. Anyone else that tries running that looks like they have a chance get death threats. I think he either did sports or was perhaps in the military for a period. Afterward he went into some local politics. He comes out of nowhere, though. At no point does he give the impression of having been in the establishment for a time. Perhaps he was a Congressman that flipped a red district for the first time in some long while.

One of the most important things about him is he does not mince words. He swears. Not in a vulgar way that would offend Karen from Nebraska but in a normal everyday way that you would speak with a friend. He speaks plainly as a man of the land. He says it's crap that we don't have healthcare. How's middle class or poor folks supposed to put food on their table when they can't afford to get their kids into preschool? He talks about the economy a lot. It's the first thing he talks about in most conversations. He quotes FDR a lot, though he doesn't draw attention to it. He just puts that out there for anyone who is listening that has ears.

We're going for masculine ideal here. I think he's straight in the Marlon Brando in his prime way. A real man's man.

His big plan is called the Good Deal. He was going to call it the New Deal but heard that was already taken. (The press exhale air out of their noses and give a small smirk at the joke) It's called the Good Deal because he's given it a good deal of thought and because he wants to be totally honest and straightforward with Americans. And it's just a plain good deal that anyone can understand.

The first big focus of the Good Deal is fixing the economy as stated previously. We're gonna bring that damn inflation down. Because he knows that it's what everyday Americans care about most. How could they not? They see it on the price sticker every week at the grocery store. Also tax cuts across the board for the majority of Americans. We are going to to raise taxes on the billionaires as well as start taxing unrealized gains and bring them back into the fold of American society. At no point are those last two ideas stated in any way. It is there in the details but "raise taxes" literally never leaves anyone in the admin's mouths. It is strictly advertised as a big tax cut.

His second aspect of the Good Deal is a big reintroduction of the Civilian Conservation Corps. "A job for every American, if they want it." We've let our infrastructure degrade to a ridiculous degree. And we've got good Americans without jobs, who've been passed over through no fault of their own as times have changed. They were lied to and told their industries would take care of them. But that's ok because we've got good honest work for them that will pay well and needs doing. Whether you live in the biggest cities we've got or you're out in the boonies, America needs your help. The CCC is gonna be brought back in a big way. We're fixing roads, we're building parks, we've got training for people if they wanna do more technical stuff. Working on public utilities and such. You can take that to the bank. That's good training that'll help you wherever you decide to go with your life. Or even if you wanna stay with the CCC. We'll always have you. And our retirement benefits are good. We'll also be building up community centers, especially in areas that don't have them. They aren't completely run by the CCC, or rather aren't entirely intended for them. Rather, they are for that community's benefit. Whatever that community needs. The idea is to reconnect individual communities with the larger whole of America. To make us feel like we're all working towards a common cause again. But also to act as an outreach program. getting people in the CCC involved in their local politics. Trying to replace some of the old dinosaurs. So we can actually get things done.

I have a number of reasons that I want the CCC to come back in this way. Young American men are in crisis. It would be great if they could stop being so fucking hysterical, but it's become entirely clear that that isn't possible. And they are near single-handedly destroying the country. Either by action or inaction. So, the CCC. Let's talk about the real point of it. I want there to be a very clear A to B to C pathway. I want young men to feel welcome to the CCC. That it's a great path they could take with their lives. Where they'll serve their local community while also being prepared to better serve their local region. The idea is that for the younger men, their job will be focused more on the traditional idea. More nature-focused. Building trails and such. Bridges. That sort of thing. But as they get older, I want them to be able to get training in the various trades. (The intent is also to bring older men into the fold at that stage.) And then as they get even older they become leaders that help and train younger men. I should point out, while this is all pretty male-focused, the whole thing will be open to women. It's just there's a very clear problem happening and it ain't women. I want young people to feel needed and important. And another aspect of this is that I and Mr. Smith both love infrastructure so building an infrastructure around improving your infrastructure is a win-win in our books.

Also Mr. Smith wants NASA to be way bigger than it is. We're going to Mars and it's gonna be within his terms (he will be getting two).

Something else I think Mr. Smith will do is bring back the Fireside Chat of FDR. He wants to talk to every American individually. So he's bringing back the Fireside Chat in the form of a weekly podcast. He and his VP will, just for 30 or so minutes a week, do a "shoot-the-shit" formatted podcast with each other. Where they talk about what's going on in their lives. Stuff that's going on in the White House. When they're running into issues with Congress. The intent is to directly talk about what they're accomplishing but in a very casual setting. With the occasional "Hey listener, if you're in {Red State}, give your Congressman a call, we need help passing {whatever} that's meant to help your community." I want there to be clear action items. They occasionally will bring on other guests from the cabinet. But it's primarily in the genre of the "two dudes talking" podcast. It's not exactly comedy, but there is a lot of joking and banter. It's a politics podcast done by the heads of the Executive branch of the government that doesn't talk about politics.

They will also sometimes do more themed episodes that are visual. The White House cook teaching them how to make something around Thanksgiving time. The President showing off his classic car he's been working on in the driveway. The Pres and VP bringing on an American survivalist to teach them how to survive in the wilderness (camera view expands to reveal the men squatting on the White House lawn, a car drives by). The Pres brings on someone from the American Heart Association to coach his normally bookish VP on how to stay fit in the gym (everyone is still wearing their suits). The Pres loves it and has a gym bro sort of energy teasing his VP but rooting him on. I want them both to exude a positive masculinity vibe.

I should also say now, his VP I think will be a black man. Mr. VP is college-educated. I don't really care what specifically he did but Mr. Smith occasionally self-deprecatingly jokes that Mr. VP is the real brains behind the operation because he's got a degree and Mr. Smith doesn't. It's only a joke though, you can see that Mr. Smith is not some himbo, he is whip-smart. He's just almost always casual except when pomp and circumstance is required. I want that to be very clear, he ain't stupid at all. Just approachable and friendly.

So that's my ideal candidate. I want him to focus big on his domestic agenda. Not in an isolationist way but more just so that, for example on Fireside Chat, he can constantly talk about how much they're getting done even when there's zero movement in Congress. I want every American to feel like they personally know Mr. Smith. Perhaps in a savior way to the left and in a respectful neighborly way to the right. Almost as though you could see yourself having a beer with him...

Just as a note, I was not thinking of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington when writing all this. I did later note the coincidence. ↩︎

2024-09-25 My RSS Journey

2024-10-10T00:00:00.000Z

I've become pretty tired of the general structure of the internet. The 5 big sites that consist entirely of screenshots from the other 4 sites. In particular I got mad when Reddit did its API nonsense and took away my favorite app. (RIF Is Fun Golden Platinum Is Dead, Long Live RIF IS Fun Golden Platinum). In the wake of that and my general disdain of what Reddit had become. The fun bits were drowned out with the memey bullshit. I could look at any post's headline and predict with 100% accuracy what the top replies were going to be. No good. So earlier this year I decided to take a step back and reevaluate the websites I was filling my time. And how I was interacting with them.

I had used RSS before. At some point in the old old days I had used Google Reader for a brief period of time. I didn't get very far into it though and had largely forgot about the concept (around the same time I had started regularly visiting Reddit...). But I had heard some rumblings on your Tildes and your Hackers News of people getting back into RSS. The idea seemed quite sound. I had this feeling that the web was too big. The things that I was being shown was veering closer and closer to a baseline. I wanted more originality, and more of a feeling of locality. I liked the idea of following individual (well-vetted) people. So RSS it was.

Fraidycat

I didn't start with the system I've ended up using. Something I cam across, I believe on Hacker News, was Fraidycat. I really like this software. It makes a lot of decisions that make sense to me. It treats the feeds you follow like people. And one of the primary aspects that you choose when following is how frequently you want to follow them. Sure, this is available in other RSS aggregators (how often you are checking the feed for updates) but something about putting that functionality front and center in the GUI clicked for me. Also I just think it has a really nice interface in general. It's friendly, but useful.

That being said, after using Fraidycat for a couple of weeks, slowly moving bookmarks, Twitter follows, news feeds etc over to it, I started to run into some pain points. Primarily was the lack of synchronization between computers. I could set up Fraidycat as an extension on my home computer and work computer, but it wasn't available on the phone. That caused me to immediately retreat to Reddit whenever I was in phone land, which felt like it was going against the idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole time I felt a bit nervous. Nothing was stopping me from backing up my feeds in an OPML file, but it just made me feel uneasy my subscriptions and settings and everything existing only in a specific browser on a specific computer. I wanted something more centralized.

Fraidycat is very good software, though. Highly recommend it as a possible option. Didn't seem to be getting much love in the dev department, last I checked. But like I said, worked fine as is.

Choosing a System

So Fraidycat didn't last too long and I knew I needed something a bit more hardcore to meet my needs. Whatever I decided to pick, I knew it had to be some sort of self-hosted aggregation system. A core requirement was I wanted to be able to read feeds on my computer and my phone. And if I read something on one, I wanted it to be marked as read on the other. This eliminated any standalone desktop apps or phone apps. That's just not the sort of thing that I was going for.

Another thing I was concerned with was longevity. God bless the open source community, but I'll be honest, if I'm picking something to become the core of my internet browsing experience...I really do not want to have to pick something else in a year or two when the software stops being maintained, breaks. I mean I'm a programmer, but as of yet, I wasn't really interested in fully maintaining my own solution. Bit too big of a time commitment. A story for another time, perhaps.

Another aspect that I personally looked for was some level of extension. A bespoke extension system wasn't necessarily a requirement, but I could see such a thing being useful for tailoring the RSS system to my exact desires.

So I perused the RSS scene. There were a couple standouts to me. I ended up choosing FreshRSS, but I will mention that Miniflux called to me. It's as simple as can be and I do appreciate software that is opinionated. That's one thing I really liked about Fraidycat. I like when my software was clearly made by a human being and doesn't feel like an amorphous gray goo that was excreted by a committee. The simple interface also reminded me a lot of old.reddit.com (real reddit) and hacker news. There were a couple features of FreshRSS that won me over. Again, I liked that it had extensions. The knowledge that if it did something that I didn't like, I could potentially change that thing more easily is a definite draw.

Initial Setup

In terms of deployment method, we're going with current hottie on the block, Docker. It's what most of my little self-hosted apps are done with. Don't disagree at all at the issues that come about when you have so many layers of abstraction and virtualization, but you gotta admit...It's easy to set up.

My initial compose file consisted of the FreshRSS image and nothing else. I'd go back to it and add on some other containers but at first we just had something along the lines of what they've got in their documentation. Didn't run into any immediate issues with the setup, though I'd end up redoing it after running into some database issues.

Picking Sources

Now we get to the fun part. Who'm I actually following? Well, I've got most of the people people listed out in my Blogroll if you'd like to see. In addition, I was still freshly off Reddit. And though I was unhappy with it on the whole, there were still some subreddits (not communities... eghh) that I had a soft spot for. Thankfully, subreddits, at least as of this writing have some nice RSS feeds built in. I did NOT want to get a bunch of subreddit feeds that were just the Hot page for each.

Example: You just add on .rss to the end of the subreddit URL. https://www.reddit.com/r/IThinkYouShouldLeave/.rss

We're trying to ween ourselves of that site, here. You can however, get the Top posts for a particular period with the following modification https://www.reddit.com/r/IThinkYouShouldLeave/top.rss?t=year

Much better, now we're just getting the best stuff of the year. Unlikely to update often so we're not getting spammed with garbage. So I went through and exported all my subreddits that I gave a shit about. I made the modification to only get the best posts of the year to the URLs. Then I added them as sources in FreshRSS. There are some extra bells and whistles you can play around with with this feature. But the year time period was more than sufficient enough for me.

Postgres

I soon ran into issues, however. I started getting a lot of error logs about the sqlite backend being locked. It started massively struggling to add new feeds or even just refresh feeds. To this day, I am unsure what the actual issue was. I don't think it was sqlite actually struggling with the workload. And I don't think it was FreshRSS's implementation. My best guess is some weird idiosyncrasy of my Docker setup. Something with the volumes or the host machine. On a lark, I decided to try using Postgres as the DB backend, which FreshRSS has as a supported option. Immediately, DB issues ceased and the interface was significantly snappier. So if you run into similar issues, try Postgres.

Extensions

Now that we've got the basics under control, I let a week or two go by and then figured out what all extensions I wanted to add. Not too many it turns out. Most of what I want out of an RSS software comes in the box with FreshRSS.

Something I discovered quickly with RSS feeds is bastards don't include their whole article in their feed! No good, I ain't always got the time to be prancing around on your website, ok? We got things we gotta do, places to go and people to see. Gotta fix that right quick. And thankfully, there's a lovely little extension that does just so. It makes use of Mozilla's Readability library to extract the full article content from the post URL and replaces the extract with the full article. Specifically this docker image that packages it up into a nice little service that FreshRSS can call for each new post. I mostly just use this on actual news news feeds. Yeah yeah, whatever. Support your news and all that. We haven't had a fourth estate in decades, so let's not pretend this is a new thing. Most of the people I follow have the whole article in their RSS feeds. Like proper good folks. The sorta neighbors you enjoy having.

The only other extensions I'm really using would be smaller visual changes. Here's the exact list. All, I believe, are available by default in the interface.

Clickable Links
Colorful List
Custom CSS
FlareSolverr
ReadingTime

More substantially, I've tried making use of RSS-Bridge to get feeds from websites that don't support it (like demons). But I've had nothing but trouble with it. Again, could probably just be a case of me not understanding something. Although another issue is that the big site I'm wanting feeds from is Twitter and we don't even need to talk about all that. Looking into RSSHub, may try that at some point.

Conclusions

Overall, I've been happy with FreshRSS. It does everything I need it to and it feels stable. Two of the biggest things that I could ask for. Below is my compose file for my installation.

name: freshrss

services:

  freshrss:
    image: freshrss/freshrss:edge
    container_name: freshrss
    environment:
      PUID: 100
      PGID: 100
      TZ: timezone_here
      CRON_MIN: '3,33'
    volumes:
      - /dockerfolder/freshrss/data:/var/www/FreshRSS/data
      - /dockerfolder/freshrss/extensions:/var/www/FreshRSS/extensions
    ports:
      - 80:80
    restart: unless-stopped

  database:
    image: postgres:latest
    container_name: freshrss_db
    ports:
      - 5432:5432
    environment:
      PUID: 100
      PGID: 100
      POSTGRES_USER: username_here
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: password_here
      POSTGRES_DB: default_database
      PGDATA: /data/postgres
    volumes:
      - /dockerfolder/postgres:/data/postgres
    restart: unless-stopped

  rssbridge:
    image: rssbridge/rss-bridge:latest
    container_name: rssbridge
    ports:
      - 10080:80
    environment:
      PUID: 100
      PGID: 100
    volumes:
      - /dockerfolder/rssbridge/config.ini.php:/app/config.ini.php
    restart: unless-stopped

  readability:
    image: phpdockerio/readability-js-server:latest
    container_name: readability
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    environment:
      PUID: 100
      PGID: 100
    restart: unless-stopped

  flare:
    image: flaresolverr/flaresolverr:latest
    container_name: flaresolverr_rss
    ports:
      - 8191:8191
    environment:
      PUID: 100
      PGID: 100
    volumes:
      - /dockerfolder/flaresolverr_rss:/config
    restart: unless-stopped

2024-08-20 I'm Tired of Being Asked to Care About the Robot

2025-03-13T00:00:00.000Z

So I played Norco recently. It was generally a nice game. Certainly beautiful and made with heart. I think it was a bit too scattershot and had too many moving pieces to properly coalesce together into a coherent whole. But it was fine. As I've let it sit, though, there's a particular scene that stands out. Or rather just something that happens in the story that I've seen a lot of recently. Without going into specifics, at one point a robot that you trusted betrays you. And then later we see their broken body and are expected to feel sad about it. And that fell flat for me, so I wanted to think through why.

I feel this has come up quite a lot recently in pop culture in some way. being asked to humanize and care for the robots, the AI, the hosts, the whatever we're gonna call it in this particular fictional world. And to be honest, I think I'm done with that theme. It's not that I don't think it can be done well or anything. It's just that it's boring. What, at the end of the day, are we being asked to do? Essentially, feel empathy. And that's the beginning and end of it. Just feel a vague sense of empathy for a human-shaped piece of driftwood. I'm not the kind of person that wholesale dismisses the idea of singularity. I'm not saying fuck all the robots, kick em as they pass, they're not real people and they can never be. I'm perfectly open to the idea that technology could progress to a point that we could create an artificial thing such that the difference between what it is doing and what we are doing is no longer a very meaningful question.

Rather, what I am saying is that in 99% of cases, the actual implementation of this theme is not done well and I don't really find it interesting in the first place when it is done well. I don't find it interesting because for me, I'm starting to see this theme as follows: "This rock is sad. It has a sad face on it. You should feel sad about the rock." There's just nothing going on there. What's being asked of me is "Feel empathy." The problem is that that is not a hard task. The issue is that it is an easy one. It's one of the most basic aspects of being human. "Exercising" that muscle on the sad rock isn't doing me any good. It feels like I'm being asked to draw a house as a child would, with a triangle sitting atop a square with a small rectangle in the middle for the front door. You can ask me to do that exercise a hundred times and I'm never going to become a better artist for it.

Feeling empathy for the robots is not difficult, it's too easy. And so I think it's boring. You see the theme crop up all the time. Westworld, Soma, Detroit Become Human, the aforementioned Norco. But, the robots are never portrayed as absolute bastards. We always have them as stock-standard humans with the very slight change of needing to be plugged into the wall overnight. And that's so boring! We can do better. If your work revolves around wanting the player to feel empathy, expect better of them. I know I'm very Disco Elysium-pilled, but I really want games held to a higher standard. Harry is a fuckup by all measurements, but you feel an intense sense of connection and empathy with him because you get to know him. So even when he falters, or when you learn of something horrendous he's done in the past, you grit your teeth and narrow your eyes. You look at him and go "Goddammit...". But you look at his attempts to get better and try to look past the bad. And you think "Well maybe he can...". You see the better parts of him and think maybe there's hope. That there's still time. I want more Harrys and fewer robots.

2024-08-16 Music Make You Lose Control (Of Your Emotions)

2025-03-13T00:00:00.000Z

Today, I was listening to an oldie but a goodie. Sun Station from the Outer Wilds soundtrack. I think it's one of the more emotive songs in an already pretty stacked soundtrack. That had me thinking of some of the other particularly emotionally affecting songs I can recall hearing in the various games that I've played. Thought I would share some of those that came to mind.

The Sun Station (Outer Wilds)

Truly a haunting song. Sun Station plays, naturally, whenever you make it to the Sun Station. One of the running questions in Outer Wilds that a new player will naturally ask is "What's causing the supernova and how can I stop it?" One of the most obvious things to look at, then, would be the station that orbits the sun. Further exploration will reveal the Nomai plan to use the sun's supernova to power their Ash Twin Project. And so with our destination locked we make our way onto the station. Of course such a thing is easier said than done. If you wanna do it the old-fashioned way, physically landing on the sun station requires some expert flying and mastery of the enormous tidal forces you've gotta go toe-to-toe with. Or I suppose you could just find the teleporter like a normal person.

The shock is immediate upon entering the station (or removing the hatch that reveals it from the teleporter room). The low drone of the synths. The bright light of the sun not a hundred meters away. You step into what feels like a holy, if tragic, place. Tragic because soon you learn that the sun station is inoperable. Despite the Nomai's best attempts the station could not initiate a supernova, nor is it doing so now. The supernova you've been caught in isn't unnatural, nor can it be stopped. The sun continues to march towards its death, only minutes away now. It's soon going to consume the station you're on. You're left with a truly awe-inspiring view and the knowledge that this is not something that can be fixed.

La Revacholiere (Disco Elysium)

Burn, Baby, Burn found dead in a ditch. I know, I know. I am quite the fan of Sad FM. But it can't be overstated how much the conversation with the Insulindian Phasmid is the emotional climax of the game. And La Revacholiere is a big part of that.

The phasmid is incredible. How, in one conversation, can we go so low to so full of hope? The phasmid has a strange way of speaking, a strange way of thinking. It feels almost alien at first with its animal thoughts, but becomes tender and loving. We've done our job and found the killer against all odds. And the phasmid delivers some beautiful and heart-warming prose. Not without a takeaway and a warning of the dangers ahead, of course.

That must be incredibly hard. The arthropods are in silent and meaningless awe of you. Know that we are watching -- when you're tired, when the vision spins out of control. The insects will be looking on. Rooting for you. And when you fall we will come to raise you up, bud from you, banner-like, blossom from you and carry you apart in a sky funeral. In honour of your passing.

The pale, too, came with you. No one remembers it before you. The cnidarians do not, the radially symmetrics do not. There is an almost unanimous agreement between the birds and the plants that you are going to destroy us all.

Desperation/Escape From Habitation Decks (Alien Isolation)

If ever there were an example of a soundtrack that added to the overall feel of the world, it would be Alien Isolation. Every part of the game is a love letter to the Alien movies. One in particular always stuck in my head though. The soundtrack, criminally, is not available for me to stream, so I am beholden to the gracious folks that upload all the music to YouTube. I've seen this particular track I'm talking about referred to both as Desperation and also Escape From Habitation Decks. I'm just going to call if Desperation for brevity's sake.

Desperation and some similar tracks play in some of the most tense sequences in an immensely tense game. This one in particular plays quite near the end of the game. You're now on your way out, actively working to get back to the Torrens. You've been hounded for hours by those bastard aliens that will not let up. Amanda has opened the way forward and most now make her way back through several winding hallways with the alien right on her ass. It is beyond stressful and the strings in the song do incredible work in making this your final challenge (generally after this point you're on a rail). I am desperate (ha) to find more tracks like this one. So good and getting your blood pressure up. The combination of the strings and the sci fi synth is a perfect match. Every strum on the violin(?) (I do not know music...) feels like a paper cut, urging you along. Prodding you to move. With every shadow you pass (potentially) hiding death.

Ein Traum (Pentiment)

I was shocked when I learned that main pop girl Lingua Ignota was in Pentiment. I didn't notice that she did the intro as well, but did immediately notice the outro. Ein Traum is an excellent capstone to a great story. You've played through several decades of Tassing's history and have gotten to know it and its people intimately. So it's incredibly satisfying seeing Magdalene's final mural showcasing the town's history. (Justice for Vácslav!) A great "pulling back" moment where we can take in what we've been through now that we see the whole picture. And Kristin's voice is uniquely perfect for this song. For anyone that doesn't know her music, I can see her performance completely blending in with the time period. This is an excellent use of music establishing place and also wrapping up the emotions we've been feeling as the game comes to its end. Somber, but soulful and grand. You feel the end to an epic unraveling in front of you.

2024-05-28 Disney Magic Retrospective

2026-04-13T00:00:00.000Z

Summary

Inspired by streaming the Kingdom Hearts series and the knowledge that (as of the time of this writing) we'll be watching Snow White as part of the AFI Top 100 List, I've decided I want to rewatch all the Disney movies. From beginning to end. I wanna take a genuine look at the magic. The secret stuff that is oft-remarked upon, but rarely closely interrogated. I feel like people will say that Disney used to be more magical. But was it? Or is it just that we grew up? If it was, when did the magic go away?

Will be returning to this over a period of time. Don't recall where specifically I got the below list. It was some Wikipedia list page or another. I am sure there is disagreement here and there about which movies are the real Disney movies and which are not. Maybe I'm missing some and maybe I'm including some that literally no one on Earth gives a toss about. Oh well.

List

Year	Movie	Link
1937	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)#Review
1940	Pinocchio	Pinocchio (1940)#Review
1940	Fantasia	Fantasia (1940)#Review
1941	Dumbo	Dumbo (1941)#Review
1942	Bambi	Bambi (1942)#Review
1943	Saludos Amigos	Saludos Amigos (1942)#Review
1945	The Three Caballeros	The Three Caballeros (1945)#Review
1946	Make Mine Music	Make Mine Music (1946)#Review
1947	Fun and Fancy Free
1948	Melody Time
1949	The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
1950	Cinderella
1951	Alice in Wonderland	Alice in Wonderland (1951)#Review
1953	Peter Pan
1955	Lady and the Tramp
1959	Sleeping Beauty	Sleeping Beauty (1959)#Review
1961	One Hundred and One Dalmatians
1963	The Sword in the Stone
1967	The Jungle Book
1970	The Aristocats
1973	Robin Hood
1977	The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
1977	The Rescuers
1981	The Fox and the Hound
1985	The Black Cauldron
1986	The Great Mouse Detective
1988	Oliver & Company
1989	The Little Mermaid
1990	The Rescuers Down Under
1991	Beauty and the Beast
1992	Aladdin
1994	The Lion King
1995	Pocahontas
1996	The Hunchback of Notre Dame
1997	Hercules	Hercules (1997)#Review
1998	Mulan
1999	Tarzan
2000	Dinosaur
2000	Fantasia 2000
2000	The Emperor's New Groove
2001	Atlantis: The Lost Empire
2002	Lilo & Stitch
2002	Treasure Planet
2003	Brother Bear
2004	Home on the Range
2005	Chicken Little
2007	Meet the Robinsons
2008	Bolt
2009	The Princess and the Frog
2010	Tangled
2011	Winnie the Pooh
2012	Wreck-It Ralph
2013	Frozen
2014	Big Hero 6
2016	Zootopia
2016	Moana
2018	Ralph Breaks the Internet
2019	Frozen 2
2021	Raya and the Last Dragon
2021	Encanto
2022	Strange World
2023	Wish

2023-12-08 YouTube Retrospective

2025-03-13T00:00:00.000Z

What better way to start a new blog than to immediately look backwards?! I've been wanting to write more recently and one of the things on my mind is my YouTube channel. Specifically, I've been thinking about the many many games I've played, some of the things that have worked well, other things that haven't, and generally where I wanna go moving forward.

So let's take a look back into the mists of time and see how far we've come on this journey. I think going forward I wanna start doing this each year. Also, I'm being a little loosey-goosey with what games go in which years. 2021 looks a little more stacked than it is, since there were a couple longer-running series that started there and went a couple months into 2022. But oh well. Broad sweeps, everyone, broad sweeps.

Year 1 - 2021

Games Covered

I started off my channel on Feb 14, 2021 and she certainly moved with a purpose. I could have sworn that I did like 2 or 3 series given how infrequent episodes were in the beginning. But looking back that's mostly just Call of the Sea and Rogue Galaxy. The edges...they were rough, though. I harbor no delusions that some of the first things were particularly great. I still recall when I first sat down to record my first video. I was incredibly nervous and sat for some time, finger hovering over the Start Recording button. It was something that I wanted to do, but even so, I've always been relatively insular. It was a big deal to me doing that first recording and uploading it for anyone in the world to see (a whole like 20 people!). But I can say with certainty that the whole venture has made me significantly better at public speaking.

I do have some fondness for the era but mostly just wish the audio was better. I've occasionally considered going back and remastering it, I had no idea what I was doing with the mixing. I do keep all my raw unedited footage. Never know when you might want to use it in some project later. I probably won't bother, though. It would mostly just suck up a ton of time and I don't think the result is anything a particularly large number of people are after. I do strongly feel that as I've gone on LPing, I've gotten better at it. There's gems here, but I'd be the first to say how rough they are. So put that on the "maybe someday if I'm really feelin' it" list.

Something else from this era I'd like to comment on. Rogue Galaxy and Mass Effect. The two series that have involved games I've already played. I think I've pretty well decided that I want to stay away from covering games I'm already familiar with going forward. I've seen plenty of Let's Plays where the person playing the game is already familiar with it. And they've done just fine. But I think it's something I struggle with. The commentary just isn't as funny or insightful. I wouldn't necessarily call it bad, just not up to par. The novelty of the new is such a crucible of humor for me. It puts me in a state of mind for joking, I think.

There's two series that I actually ended before making any episodes public, just because I had this clear feeling that something was off. And in both cases it was a game I had already played. The first was Okami, I started recording it early 2022 and the other being Dishonored, which I had started recording mid 2023. Dishonored I may still end up doing at some point, I've wanted to play the other games and would feel weird skipping to the second one. But such is life. There's always more games to play.

Another thing that I have to comment on would be the multiple people in KOTOR and Witness. A clear hallmark of the early days. I doubt it's something that'll come up particularly often in the future. A big intent of my channel is creating a work that is an representation of me. Nothing but love for my friends who took part in those series, but had the TAC youtube channel been around at the time, I probably would have put those episodes up there. I think it's healthy to have a clear separation between group work and my own. Not discounting ever doing more collabs, I have plans to do exactly that. Just something I've stayed away from since.

Year 2 - 2022

Games Covered

Kentucky Route Zero is my white whale and I will die on that hill. Absolutely nobody watched that series and it is such a gem. I don't terribly mind, because the audio is still no good through much of this era. But it's still bit of a shame. I think about that game often to this day. It drips love and care and art goddammit.

I am really glad I started to branch out more in this era and played some indie games. I love indie and I've discovered some excellent games that I might not have had I stuck to the well-trodden path for my LP's. Road 96 and Omen Exitio being prime examples. I still occasionally find myself thinking about Road 96, it had some great art direction and music that planted itself firmly in my head. And Omen Exitio is apparently getting a sequel in the nearish future, so I'm excited to play that.

Overall, I think this year shows very clear growth on my part. I consider Alien: Isolation to be one of my first really notably good LP's. Due in no small part to how good that game was. But even so, I think if you took a random episode from this year and compared it to one of yesteryear, the difference is stark. And I'm happy about that. I have a desire for each series to be better than the last, so it feels good to be able to look back and see clear evidence of that.

Also, glad I finished Mass Effect. It was fun, but like I said, I think it's just better all around to do games I haven't already played. And that series was a huge one taking up my time. Even to this day, a not insignificant amount of the total videos I've recorded are Mass Effect.

I think Control was the only semi-disappointing game I played during this era. More than anything I just feel conflicted about it. I loved the atmosphere and the worldbuilding, but by the end of the game, the combat got really stale and it started being a slog to get through. What I should have done is just turn the difficulty way down and start blasting through it. Or I might have been happier had I either not done the DLC or perhaps left it for a bit and came back to it in the future. As it was, I think the game just went on a bit too long. I have generally stayed away from doing longer games, unless I'm certain I'm going to like it since Control. It's just how it goes, when you're recording perhaps an episode or two of a series in a week, you don't get through it very fast, so when a game's longer and being a slog, it really drags things down.

Year 3 - 2023

Games Covered

Y'all, when I tell you I have entered my Dangerous Woman era. This year was damn good and no one can tell me otherwise. Let's start with the obvious standouts. Outer Wilds and Disco Elysium shot to the top of my favorite games of all time list. So it was a lot of fun doing an LP of them. In both cases there was a day or two where I just recorded like 4 or more episodes in a row because of how good each game was.

And Call of Duty, that tempestuous mistress. That was quite the curveball given previous games I had played. But it was quite the success, those series typically getting higher than average views. And surprisingly fun, well outside of my typical wheelhouse. I think more than anything it revealed the strength of occasionally doing more action-y fast-paced games. I do wonder if perhaps I should explain what the impetus for that run of games was. It really is truly dumb and is not congruent with the amount of time I've actually put into them. Remind me to tell you about Muscles McMilitary sometime...

Onwards and Upwards

I like the diversity of games I've got on display. We do puzzles, we do horror, we do action, we do indie darling. This club has everything. Most definitely something I want to continue. I'm more than likely going to stay away from games I've already played. I think everyone, including myself, like watching someone experience something for the first time. I wanna get deeper into the actual video editing aspect of video creation. I really enjoyed the result of my Every Death idea for the Call of Duty series. Took so long to make, but fun satisfying result. I'll be on the lookout for more opportunities like that. I've had an idea for a similarly themed video for the Outer Wilds series. Haven't quite found the courage to start climbing that mountain, but I'm at least working may towards the slope so there's that.

Overall, I just wanted to say thank you if you're reading this and have taken a look at my channel. I've put a lot of work into it and I'm satisfied with what I'm getting out of it. Here's to another year! 🎉

2023-11-30 AFI Top 100 List

2025-03-13T00:00:00.000Z

Intro

The American Film Institute has a list, AFI's 100 Years... 100 American Movies, of the 100 greatest American movies of all time. The list was most recently updated in 2007. Alex and I been going through the whole list and watching each, skipping just a couple due to having seen them plenty of times before and not needing to watch them again. Linking my thoughts on each. We're going from 100 to 1.

The List

Number	Year	Movie	Link
1	1941	Citizen Kane	Citizen Kane (1941)#Review
2	1942	Casablanca	Casablanca (1942)#Review
3	1972	The Godfather	The Godfather (1972)#Review
4	1980	Raging Bull	Raging Bull (1980)#Review
5	1952	Singin In the Rain	Singin In the Rain (1952)#Review
6	1939	Gone With the Wind	Gone With the Wind (1939)#Review
7	1962	Lawrence of Arabia	Lawrence of Arabia (1962)#Review
8	1993	Schindler's List	Schindler’s List (1993)#Review
9	1958	Vertigo	Vertigo (1958)#Review
10	1939	The Wizard of Oz	Skipped
11	1931	City Lights	City Lights (1931)#Review
12	1956	The Searchers	The Searchers (1956)#Review
13	1977	Star Wars: A New Hope	Skipped
14	1960	Psycho	Psycho (1960)#Review
15	1968	2001: A Space Odyssey	2001 A Space Odyssey (1968)#Review
16	1950	Sunset Boulevard	Sunset Boulevard (1950)#Review
17	1967	The Graduate	The Graduate (1967)#Review
18	1926	The General	The General (1926)#Review
19	1954	On the Waterfront	On the Waterfront (1954)#Review
20	1946	It's a Wonderful Life	It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)#Review
21	1974	Chinatown	Chinatown (1974)#Review
22	1959	Some Like It Hot	Some Like It Hot (1959)#Review
23	1940	The Grapes of Wrath	The Grapes of Wrath (1940)#Review
24	1982	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)#Review
25	1962	To Kill a Mockingbird	To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)#Review
26	1939	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)#Review
27	1952	High Noon	High Noon (1952)#Review
28	1950	All About Eve	All About Eve (1950)#Review
29	1944	Double Indemnity	Double Indemnity (1944)#Review
30	1979	Apocalypse Now	Apocalypse Now (1979)#Review
31	1941	The Maltese Falcon	The Maltese Falcon (1941)#Review
32	1974	The Godfather Part II	The Godfather Part II (1974)#Review
33	1975	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	Skipped
34	1937	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)#Review
35	1977	Annie Hall	Annie Hall (1977)#Review
36	1957	The Bridge on the River Kwai	The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)#Review
37	1946	The Best Years of Our Lives	The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)#Review
38	1948	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)#Review
39	1964	Dr. Strangelove	Dr. Strangelove (1964)#Review
40	1965	The Sound of Music	The Sound of Music (1965)#Review
41	1933	King Kong	King Kong (1933)#Review
42	1967	Bonnie and Clyde	Bonnie and Clyde (1967)#Review
43	1969	Midnight Cowboy	Midnight Cowboy (1969)#Review
44	1940	The Philadelphia Story	The Philadelphia Story (1940)#Review
45	1953	Shane	Shane (1953)#Review
46	1934	It Happened One Night	It Happened One Night (1934)#Review
47	1951	A Streetcar Named Desire	A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)#Review
48	1954	Rear Window	Rear Window (1954)#Review
49	1916	Intolerance	Intolerance (1916)#Review
50	2001	Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings	Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)#Review
51	1961	West Side Story	West Side Story (1961)#Review
52	1976	Taxi Driver	Taxi Driver (1976)#Review
53	1978	The Deer Hunter	The Deer Hunter (1978)#Review
54	1970	MAS*H	MASH (1970)#Review
55	1959	North By Northwest	North By Northwest (1959)#Review
56	1975	Jaws	Jaws (1975)#Review
57	1976	Rocky	Rocky (1976)#Review
58	1925	The Gold Rush	The Gold Rush (1925)#Review
59	1975	Nashville	Nashville (1975)#Review
60	1933	Duck Soup	Duck Soup (1933)#Review
61	1941	Sullivan's Travels	Sullivan's Travels (1941)#Review
62	1973	American Graffiti	American Graffiti (1973)#Review
63	1972	Cabaret	Cabaret (1972)#Review
64	1976	Network	Network (1976)#Review
65	1952	The African Queen	The African Queen (1952)#Review
66	1981	Raiders of the Lost Ark	Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)#Review
67	1966	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)#Review
68	1992	Unforgiven	Unforgiven (1992)#Review
69	1982	Tootsie	Tootsie (1982)#Review
70	1971	A Clockwork Orange	A Clockwork Orange (1971)#Review
71	1998	Saving Private Ryan	Saving Private Ryan (1998)#Review
72	1994	The Shawshank Redemption	The Shawshank Redemption (1994)#Review
73	1969	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)#Review
74	1991	The Silence of the Lambs	Skipped
75	1967	In the Heat of the Night	In the Heat of the Night (1967)#Review
76	1994	Forrest Gump	Skipped
77	1976	All the President's Men	All the President's Men (1976)#Review
78	1936	Modern Times	Modern Times (1936)#Review
79	1969	The Wild Bunch	The Wild Bunch (1969)#Review
80	1960	The Apartment	The Apartment (1960)#Review
81	1960	Spartacus	Spartacus (1960)#Review
82	1927	Sunrise	Sunrise (1927)#Review
83	1997	Titanic	Skipped
84	1969	Easy Rider	Easy Rider (1969)#Review
85	1935	A Night at the Opera	A Night at the Opera (1935)#Review
86	1986	Platoon	Platoon (1986)#Review
87	1957	12 Angry Men	12 Angry Men (1957)#Review
88	1938	Bringing Up Baby	Bringing Up Baby (1938)#Review
89	1999	The Sixth Sense	The Sixth Sense (1999)#Review
90	1936	Swing Time	Swing Time (1936)#Review
91	1982	Sophie's Choice	Sophie's Choice (1982)#Review
92	1990	Goodfellas	Goodfellas (1990)#Review
93	1971	The French Connection	The French Connection (1971)#Review
94	1994	Pulp Fiction	Pulp Fiction (1994)#Review
95	1971	The Last Picture Show	The Last Picture Show (1971)#Review
96	1989	Do the Right Thing	Do the Right Thing (1989)#Review
97	1982	Blade Runner	Blade Runner (1982)#Review
98	1942	Yankee Doodle Dandy	Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)#Review
99	1995	Toy Story	Skipped
100	1959	Ben-Hur	Ben-Hur (1959)#Review

Additions

Making note of any movies I feel are missing. I would say generally the two areas I'm thinking of are either films that came after the cutoff date of the previous list that I thing could have easily ended up on the list if it was done later. Or films that work as representatives of some genre or style that I don't think the list gives enough love to.

The Shining (1980)
Of Kubrick's many other pictures on the list, I would say Shining is the best of the bunch. It is one of my personal all-time faves. 2001 is far more technically impressive if that's what we're going by but purely from a film quality perspective, I would rank Shining higher. Kubrick is very well-featured on this list. But after thinking about it more, I'm not 100% sure what I would give the boot. Probably A Clockwork Orange. Maybe Spartacus. Only because I can't think of much it did that Ben-Hur didn't also do. Or we could just add yet more Kubrick.
The Thing (1982)
I know Hollywood cant's stand horror and that's reflected by the near complete lack of horror on the list. So if we're going to be sane and put some on the list like they fucking goddamn deserve, the Thing seems like one of the most obvious inclusions. The great practical effects that have held up extremely well and have been the model by which all others are judged by. Alien would be another good choice if I only got one. But I would consider the Thing a more pure standalone example. Alien is good but I feel it functions best when paired as a double feature with Aliens. Also it's just this whole big franchise whereas the Thing is this nice succinct experience.
The Matrix (1999)
~~Maybe I'm crazy holding it up so highly~~, (I am not crazy after thinking about it more) but when thinking to this general era of films and which stand out of the crowd, Matrix seems like a clear one to point to. It's influence seems obvious.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
I don't think I'm just being biased here. Mulholland repeatedly shows up on best films of all time lists and, of Lynch's filmography, I would definitely say that it is one of the most approachable and digestible (Sorry Blue Velvet love you too). And I think it would be good to look at some of the wackier things film can do.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)/Grand Budapest (2014)
I really love Wes Anderson and I feel like something of his style needs to be represented. Grand Budapest is my personal fave of his, but Royal Tenenbaums is probably the more widely known/accoladed one. That or perhaps Moonrise Kingdom. I'd be fine with any of them, though I'd push for Grand Budapest.
Harry Potter 1 (2001)
I know, I know. It is notable, though. For the same reasons Lord of the Rings is notable. LOTR and HP were the ones that started the modern concept of franchises. They're the clear and obvious successors to what Lucas started with Star Wars. To not acknowledge them is turning a real blind eye to entire eras of film. Even if nowadays I would consider most of the offshoots of HP/LOTR mediocre at best. The Marvels, the Hunger Games, the DCs, etc. etc. HP may be based off British books, but it was an American production. And there are a couple examples of that on the list already. So seems fine to put on list.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Don't think this one needs much justification. I have to assume if the most recent revision of the list came out just slightly later, There Will Be Blood would've been on it.
No Country For Old Men (2007)
Same as for There Will Be Blood. Had the film came out slightly before list was made, I think would've been an obvious contender.
The Dark Knight (2008)
This is more a maybe for me. I know it's considered one of the best films of the 2000s time period, but I haven't actually seen it in a long time. Wonder if it holds up.
Avatar (2009)
I don't personally care about it, but it's clearly notable. James Cameron has had better stuff tho. I dunno about this one.
Stop motion something
I noticed there was no stop motion stuff. Not sure what specifically would be a good representative. Three come to mind. Nightmare Before Christmas seems the clear one. Also Coraline (2009), perhaps? Not sure how well-awarded it was. Or the Wallace and Gromit movie (2005). I guess the technique/concept comes up in other things like Star Wars, but seems like might be worth there being a movie representative of the whole craft. I think part of it is Hollywood routinely not taking animated films seriously. So you have to be Snow White/Toy Story-level to stand out.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Not even like a personal favorite of mine, I've only seen it the once. But the effects were wild for this movie, it seems like it really needs to be noted. One of those "how the hell did they make this" ones that remind me of our Ben-Hurs and our Intolerances.
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022)
A modern classic.

2023-08-14 AvP Retrospective

2025-03-13T00:00:00.000Z

When I did my Let's Play of Alien Isolation (2014), it got me really in the mood to rewatch the Alien movies. I decided to just go through and watch all of them, including the AVP and Predator movies, just for funsies. My thoughts below.

Alien (1979)

I highly doubt there's anything I could say that hasn't already been said.

Aliens (1986)

Again doubt I would have much to add. Great follow-up to Alien. Also a very good example of a well-done genre switch. The horror of Alien to the action of Aliens.

Alien 3 (1992)

Honestly I feel like it's reputation is far worse than the reality. I found myself enjoying the movie. There's plenty of problems here, but overall I think it serves as an interesting end to Ripley's arc. I think one's opinion of Alien 3 almost entirely hinges off of how they feel about the intro. The infamous killing off of Hicks and Newt. It feels so deeply unfair after everything they went through in Aliens to have these well-known and loved characters killed off instantly in the next movie. You also have to accept the illogical presence of the xeno egg on the Sulaco escape pod (How on earth did it get there?). But in a way it's more faithful to the original atmosphere and world of Alien than Aliens was. No happy endings, the world is terrible. And if you're able to get on board with that, there's plenty to like here. If you're not, you're probably going to dislike the movie. I like that again this sort of represents a genre switch from the action of Aliens to the drama of Alien 3.

Alien Resurrection (1997)

Now when I said I was ok with the genre switches that did not mean I was ok with the switch to comedy. Slapstick is not a thing I was really expecting in my Alien but here it is. It's a bit of a crime them resurrecting Ripley after her end in Alien 3, but I do admit I found the character of Ripley 8 interesting. I can see why Sigourney Weaver was up to return as her. Seeing someone we know and love be turned into a maybe possibly anti-hero part monster was fun. Even if they surrounded her with utter shite. It's just all so dumb and bad. I guess Call was also kind of ok. I like Winona Ryder and it was kind of an interesting direction for them to take the androids of this world in. Why the fuck do we have Brad Dourif happily mumbling complete nonsense about the Newborn moments before he's killed by it? Why was Newborn sucked out of a small hole? Why is Ron Perlman getting jump-scared by a spider after running from actual Xenos? Why silly swimming Xenos? It all stretches credulity to breaking. Just bad bad bad.

Prometheus (2012)

Flawed movie, but I give it a lot of leeway, because I think a lot of people judged it for being a bad Alien movie (after Resurrection people need to get off their high horses...) but "Alien" is not in the title and I do feel that is deeply relevant. It's doing something different and it's doing it successfully. I quite liked David 8 (another 8 character, hmm). He is very interesting and you cannot fucking trust him ever. I also quite like the character of Shaw. It's interesting getting her perspective on faith and religion in this universe, and satisfying seeing what happens when she meets her maker. I get being annoyed by the stupid scientists but to be fair they'd hardly be the first people in this world to do dumb things.

Alien Covenant (2017)

And again with the killing of your protagonists in the next movie...Despite this one having Alien in the title it does very much feel like more of a sequel to Prometheus. I think one's opinion of Covenant depends on their opinion of David 8 (you cannot trust him). Given that, even though we've got Xenomorphs and Neomorphs alike, he's the actual villain here. So if you like him you'll probably like movie. One thing I didn't quite like is the whole concept of this strain of Xeno being more animalistic and violent. The Xenos being intelligent is, I feel, a hallmark of them and a core thing that makes them scary.

Alien Isolation (2014)

Loving it so far. Makes me both want to play more and run far away from it because of the stress and fear. Best thing to happen to the Alien franchise since Aliens in my opinion.

Predator (1987)

So I completely forgot the music. It was made by the same person that did Back to the Future (and is the exact same style). So I just kept imagining the DeLorean to fly by out of nowhere. The movie's iconic for a reason, very quotable. Forgot how not really scary it is though. I like how the credits does a little In Memoriam scene of each of Dutch's squad. Kinda wanna see that for the other movies. Clips of each character with the "In the arms of an angel" song playing in the background.

Predator 2 (1990)

Same music here, I do like it but BTTF being one of my fave childhood series it does feel a bit distracting. I like the grimy violent feeling this version of LA gives. Similar to BTTF2 alternate Hill Valley, since that series is on my mind. Also poor Bill Paxton. He's been killed by both a Xeno and a Yautja now. Seemed most people did not like this one. I thought it was pretty ok, kinda middling. I liked the significant world building it did for the Yautja compared to P1. Also first instance of AvP connections with that Xeno skull in the trophy room.

AvP (2004)

I did the AvP before the other main Predator stuff cuz I wanted to start going by release date. The grand experiment that united universes even though they can't really stick the landing with a good movie. One of my big complaints is I had no idea who these characters were other than Weyland. Would be nice to get a bit of characterization before we start mass killing them off. Like I genuinely don't know any of their names, even main lady. And that's a real problem because if I don't know or care about them, why would I get invested in the movie? Fun concept of a Yautja considering a human as being blooded and being willing to team up for a bit.

AvP Requiem (2007)

How exactly does the US government explain dropping a nuclear warhead on a US city in this world? I'm not saying it doesn't make sense as a thing to do, it's the correct action. I'm honestly just curious how that would even go. "Whoops, it slipped." Again with AvP who the fuck are any of these people? I cannot remember any of their names. There was horny boy, bra girl, little girl, woman, rude boy who was different than horny boy, even though horny boy also came off as rude and unlikeable. And then sheriff man who, now that I think about it, never actually seemed to do anything. Odd. What's with these movies having unlikeable characters? I feel like that started in P2 and A3 and has just kinda continued. What was with the predalien going after the pregnant ladies? Felt like some weird mid 2000s edginess. These things already eat people, impregnate them with horrid chestbursters, do we really need to have them specifically target fetuses now? Is there some abortion allegory here I'm missing? Was the movie made by conservatives? Is the predalien an allegory for the evil satanic democrats? Was that Hillary making the hospital hive? I don't really care, just questions the movie makes me ask because it doesn't inspire more interesting thoughts. Just kinda blegh. Oh one thing, I'm glad technology has gotten to a point where the cloaking effect doesn't look real silly anymore.

Predators (2010)

Kinda missed your chance for some nice symmetry with the second movie in a series being the first name but plural. I feel like they saw they could do that to match Aliens and felt so clever they just had to do it, despite the fact that this is the 3rd one and not second. Are we just pretending P2 didn't happen? Didn't really seem that bad to me. I feel like the naming scheme of all these is just nonsense. Sometimes we do plural, sometimes we do numbers and sometimes we do a colon and extra words on the end. Anyway, Adrien Brody's a good actor. Also Laurence Fishburne, love him. But honestly this one was very fun! Lots of good ideas here. Predadogs and River Ghosts were interesting, I somehow was more invested in a group of murderers and psychos than the usual randos the Yautja hunt. Also why exactly did it take them till the 5th movie these creatures were in to actually use the noise mimicking thing they can do to be creepy? Genuinely flabbergasted. I liked the inversion of the Yautja bringing people onto one of their worlds to hunt them. Fun little idea that makes you more on edge about what nonsense they could have set up that doesn't happen so much when they're on our home turf. These Yautja are apparently named "Super Predators" by the way. Phrasing...As for things I don't like, kinda missing the BTTF music. Also, jail for killing Machete in the first 5 minutes!

The Predator (2018)

I didn't care for this one. It felt very overly hollywoodized to me. Like without having looked into the production this feels very much more on the end of the "we want a Predator movie, make it for us" than the "I've got an idea for a Predator movie, I'd like to make". There was also the weird autism=next step in human evolution stuff, that was kinda strange. I like that they brought back the clandestine group researching the Predators from P2. Was weird how that was a thing and then never mentioned again. Also movie is too quippy. I'm getting a lot of MCU energy. I also did not like that they started translating what the Yautja are all saying in subtitles. Seems dumb. The few times one has spoken to a human in these movies they do it by hand signals and context clues. It feels more clever that way. They do lots of tell, not show in this movie. Main Man and main guy of military reject people had some real good chemistry. They'd make a great vaguely homoerotic buddy cop duo.

Prey (2022)

Cleever title. Upcoming Predator movie. Some Comanche warrior girl against a Yautja. Seems like could be fun. An interesting thing is they apparently will have an all Comanche language dub of the film. Which makes me wonder is the footage from the English or the Comanche, is it completely different footage? Or do they like edit the lip movements over? Strange but doing all the work of having a dub in Comanche seems like something they would do if they cared about detail. It's being done by person that did 10 Cloverfield Lane which I really enjoy so should be interesting if nothing else.