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kairosimperative · 3 months ago

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Day 10: Settings

Setting is something you usually only hear about in the context of a checklist for putting together a work of fiction, but my home base as both a writer and a fan is SFF, where setting can be practically everything. So I pay attention to it, and it wasn’t hard to come up with a pile of favorites.

Note that I say practically everything, and that it can be. Sometimes the awesome setting can’t make up for the wooden characters or dumb plot, and I’m not standing by the entire work for any of the below. But I’d probably jump at the chance to live in its world, or at least take a lengthy visit.

10. Valdemar

I gave up on Mercedes Lackey a long long time ago, but given how many of her books I’ve read, it would be a disservice to not recognize that something kept me reading. Maybe the schmaltz itself is the key: the covers of the Heralds of Valdemar paperbacks look like the pink aisle in a toy store, and after outgrowing the latter, a girl could be forgiven for seeking it out in the former.

What’s Valdemar like? Well, gryphons are present as POV characters, for starters. Heralds are reborn as equine “Companions” to choose -- sorry, Choose -- more Heralds. It's enshrined in Valdemar law that the monarch has to be a Herald, and all of those are Companion-approved so it’s impossible to have a ruler with a wicked heart. The Companions are white because apparently magic has bleach in it (isn’t that great?). Everyone has modern speech patterns and progressive values, unless they’re evil.

Go beyond that one nation and you get more varieties of sugar. I forget the name of the forest people but they have bondbirds (telepathic raptors) instead of Companions. The Shin’a’in don’t have either but they breed the best horses, and historical magical interference is implemented to explain why these horses act like dogs instead of herd animals.

It’s a pink toy store life, but with sex. As if that wasn’t indulgent enough, it taps into our primal need for understanding and connection through one of the fantasy genre’s favorite tropes: a telepathic link to an animal-shaped entity who loves you and knows you and will never leave you. It’s too bad that today’s young adults get post-apocalyptic fiction instead.

9. Riley’s Control Room

A concept like this one could have fizzled, and I’m not sure it’s enough of a setting to support more than a single movie. I’ve often said it seems like a great way to talk to young children about their emotions, and I’m guessing that was intentional on the part of its creators. But I’m all grown up, and these characters hit me in the feels, and the characters are feels, so those feels became my feels and now my feels are characters. It’s complicated okay.

Anyway, what really impressed me was how tightly the concept of a mind as a populated landscape was constructed. It’s not just the five emotions arguing with each other; there’s a control room with a panel that begins as a single button in Riley’s infancy, causing her to cry or laugh depending on whether Sadness or Joy presses it. As she grows, more controls appear, along with more emotions to operate them. That alone still wouldn’t give the premise much depth, but here we get some brilliance: the control room is just one small part of the world.

As the story rolls out, we see the production and storage of memories, islands representing facets of Riley’s personality, a dream theater, a subconscious boyfriend fantasy, and the permanent loss of a once-beloved imaginary friend, offset by frequent reminders that this is all taking place within a single young person’s mind. There are plot holes, but the metaphor works on every level. All of us have a world inside.

8. Deadlands

As a genre, Weird West doesn’t particularly do anything for me, which is to be expected as neither do its parents, the wild west and horror genres. Also I’ve only ever spent a couple evenings playing/observing this game, and those were quite possibly before you were born. Since I’m approaching this meme autobiographically rather than objectively, that should give you some idea of how much of an impression Deadlands made on me.

If I may try to summarize the setting: just before the Civil War, some native shamans performed a ritual in an attempt to rid the land of the white settlers. It backfired, releasing evil spirits who feed on fear and are spreading a mystical blight with the ultimate goal of transforming the planet to a living hell. Due to their influence, the war continues to rage on, and the dead soldiers may rise up as zombies. California sank into the ocean, just like we always knew it would, but there was a superfuel underneath that ushered in steampunk technology (and beyond). Hoyle’s Book of Games was published with an internal secret code teaching the savvy to perform magic tricks as the “Huckster” class. There are jackalopes; jackalopes are real.

The gameplay brought you further into it: along with polyhedral dice, a deck of cards was used for randomization. The handbook was written in an old west dialect with options to build your character with traits like “Yeller” or “Hankerin’.” The group I knew played on a poker table with no light except a few gas lamps. Yeah, they were committed, but it’s the kind of game that rewards it.

7. Equestria

Now, this is really why I don’t need Valdemar anymore. Sparkly pastels? Check. Magical adventures as a thin veneer over excruciatingly simple relationship conflicts? Check. Talking equine characters? CHECKITY CHECK. I mean, the only real drawback to ponies in fiction is that there are always humans around stealing their airtime, right? Welcome to friggin’ Equestria.

(To bury it early, I don’t approve of Equestria Girls, but you shouldn’t have had to ask.)

Not that it needs any justification beyond that, but, straight talk, there actually is some pretty good worldbuilding in this series by general fantasy standards, so let’s take a quick tour. Equestria isn’t the name of the planet; there are lands outside of it, but borders aren’t that clearly defined so it’ll do as a catch-all name. As implied, the residents are primarily equine, but all kinds of other fantasy creatures and real-world animals live there as well. Some talk, some don’t. The latter need ponies to take care of them, just like plants need ponies to nurture them and weather needs ponies to function.

Even saturated with magic as it is, a society run by ungulates seems like it would pose some problems, like the lack of opposable thumbs. Early MLP versions got around this by having things stick to the ponies’ forelegs whenever they were needed. FIM doesn’t get around it. Every object that a pony handles is designed for a pony to handle. They use their teeth a lot. Any job that truly requires fine motor skills goes to the unicorns.

It gets better. But Kairos, you ask, how can it possibly get better? I’ll tell you how: horse puns. I’m still not done rolling the word “Cloudsdale” around in my head.

6. Dinotopia

I can’t really remember many plot details from any of the Dinotopia books, and I don’t feel like I need to. The entire appeal of the series is the art, from the double-page spreads to the corner sketches with little captions to explain something from the text. The text holds all the art together, yes, but it does that by documenting all of the details from the art to explain how humans coexist with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, working toward a complete picture rather than the introduction and resolution of a conflict.

Some of the animals form one-on-one bonds to humans, some of them communicate through written or spoken language, and some of them keep their distance. How the carnivores survive without being universally regarded as evil is addressed, as are everyday matters like what happens to giant piles of sauropod poop -- and even the ominous double meaning of the word “Dinotopia.”

5. Pandora

Now we’ll have some fun: this here is my token example of a really crappy story with a really awesome setting. When I think about how bad Avatar was I don’t feel angry about it, because it was fun, but roughly 100% of the fun came from the awesome world where it was set, and the SFX used to pull it off in all the glory it deserved.

Starting with a planet that’s just one big honkin’ jungle is always a plus. (I understand there’s also oceans, and, what, plains and stuff on Pandora as well, but it’s not like I’m going to rewatch it to categorize them all.) The biodiversity makes the jungle fantastic as well as making it fantasy, although with a nice sci-fi veneer (nope, not space opera, sorry) to help pretend it’s for grown-ups. The foliage is sprawling and beautiful and dangerous, and the fauna looks like foliage, but more beautiful and more overtly dangerous.

By the time I get this published, the first of the sequels will probably be out, but as I’m writing there’s only been a trailer. I did just read something about the new aquatic animals that are going to be introduced and now I’m excited. There are some giant whales and a couple things that Na’vi can ride, and the best scenes in the original were of riding the horse things and the flying things, so expect more of that.

And then there’s the icing: the Na’vi themselves. They look like Nightcrawler, they live in harmony with nature, blah blah, but wait -- they also have creepy magic tentacles coming out of their braids and they can use them to connect to other forms of life in their world on a spiritual level. What does that feel like? How could it have evolved? Do they connect braids during sex? Obviously yes to the last, but anyway, super cinematic worldbuilding.

4. The Four Nations

The idea of dividing magic up into the four traditional elements is...really, really overdone. But it also has an enduring attraction for the kind of minds that enjoy thinking about magic at all, so no big deal about the cliche. I’ll add that Avatar: the Last Airbender puts a few unique spins on it, not least of which is applying the elements to actual civilizations.

Although the series is still heavily steeped in fantasy, the racial, cultural, and geographical differences between the Water Tribe, Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, and Air Nomads have a delightful way of grounding it. It’s made clear from the start that “bending” is passed on genetically and statistically uncommon, but it’s also such a familiar reality that civilizations are founded on it. When we skip two generations to get to The Legend of Korra, the careful thought that the writers put into this world shows, and it’s brilliant: the advancements in bending that the characters have made are treated as an industrial revolution and put to good use, and the effects these changes have on the population are given a major focus. Fantasy worlds tend to go through a lot of cataclysmic events, but it’s seriously rare to see them develop naturally.

Okay but yeah, full disclosure: it’s the fauna that really won me over (again). Lemur-bats. Triceratops rhinos. Koala sheep. A...bear? Weird.

3. Lyra’s Oxford

I talk about daemons a lot and it’s for essentially self-indulgent reasons, so I’m going to start by mentioning a couple other facets of this universe. (Parallel universe, that is. It’s confirmed by the text this time, and though again it doesn’t have a name, it makes sense to hitch it to the main character and refer to it as the place she knows best. It’s also the title of one of the books or stories in the canon that I haven’t read yet.)

It’s steampunk! Practical air travel options include ballooning. Humanity is more or less the dominant race, but we also have angels, sentient polar bears, and a couple critters of varied intelligence who pop up to remind us that the world is much bigger than we’ll ever know and then vanish into the narrative. The geography is recognizable, and some locations and institutions even have the same or similar names as the ones we know. Even the use of the Church as a Shadowy Government Agency™ works in context if you ignore the authorial intent.

Okay, that’s enough. Back to daemons. Each human is accompanied by an animal which reflects his or her inner character and shapeshifts until adulthood, when personality has settled. Everyone has one, including you and me, although ours are internal. You don’t touch someone else’s daemon, although daemons touch each other. They can speak. It hurts, and can be fatal, to be too far from your daemon. Most importantly, rules are made to be broken.

There are so many reasons that this concept wouldn’t work in reality that it’s not worth bringing them up, but I don’t care. The symbolism is fascinating and I want a daemon.

2. Middle-earth

For most of the previous ones, however I phrased it, I meant the entire world/’verse used in the work of fiction. For this one, well, I’m fond of the entirety of Middle-earth, but the Shire is where my heart lives.

Oddly, this is also closer to real-world history than anything else on my list. We know it’s fantasy and that hobbits are a mythical race, but for all intents and purposes, they’re short barefoot humans, and there’s very little about their ways that wasn’t directly inspired by English culture, or that we couldn’t adapt for our own lives. And by Elbereth and Gilthoniel, I surely would.

The Shire isn’t a paradise in any traditional sense, especially compared to Middle-earth’s Elven settlements. It’s not majestic, and no pervading sense of love and wisdom guides its residents. Hobbits can be petty, jealous, and lazy. They’re just people, looking after their own needs in a little piece of the world.

But here’s what they’re doing right: their own needs are enough. They don’t care that they have no power beyond their own easily smashable towns. What they have instead of power is better: good food and drink, pipeweed, music, satisfying work, laughter, dancing, fertile land, family, and stories. They keep balance with nature, not because they’re heroic defenders but because the balance is mutually beneficial.

The innocence that Bilbo and Frodo bring to their respective stories is at least as important as their courage. The courage may come from their own hearts, but the innocence comes from the Shire, Tolkien’s Garden of Eden.

The World of the Wheel

This was in many ways my introduction to the genre, and I was young, so it got pushed to the back of my mind as a “default fantasy” until the adaptation began brewing, and only now am I fully appreciating just how innovative and complex The Wheel of Time is, and how much of that is the setting.

Fandom named it “Randland,” but within the text it’s simply the world, and the best theory pins it as a parallel dimension to the real world, complete with crossovers if you can spot them. It’s a Renaissance analog with many of the usual high fantasy trappings, including magic, but the word ‘magic’ is never used; instead, characters “channel the One Power.” Kicker? The One Power is divided into a male and female half, and due to events in the extensive history of the world which are gradually revealed, if you’re a guy and you try channeling, you’ll eventually go insane (and rot alive).

Hence, gender politics took a heck of a different route than it has in our history, and male channelers get hunted down like dogs while women, whether they can channel or not, have a standing equal to or greater than men at every level of government.

The other crucial building block is reincarnation. The poor bastard responsible for corrupting the One Power, who also by the way killed everyone he loved and set off worldwide natural disasters on an epic scale, is scheduled to be reborn and nobody knows if he’s going to break the world again or if this time he’s going to save it. That’s also the plot of the series. If you start with the books you’ll know pretty early on who the Dragon is but in the show they save it for a big reveal, which is actually kind of neat.

Unlike other fantasy worlds, there aren’t any direct parallels to medieval England in this one, or in fact to any real places or time periods. Each culture is crafted from the ground up, and thanks to the Breaking of the World, there isn’t even much correspondence to the natural areas where they’re centered -- that’s why the desert warriors are gingers, incidentally. Realism isn’t a priority, but detail is, and in a way it comes to the same thing: Randland feels like it exists.

Oh, and the map of Tar Valon is vaguely pornographic. See above.

#kairos 30 day meme #the wheel of time #middle-earth #inside out #his dark materials #james cameron avatar #the heralds of valdemar #deadlands rpg #my little pony: friendship is magic #dinotopia #avatar: the last airbender

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kairosimperative · 3 months ago

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Day Nine: Musicals

When I was a kid I used to think stage plays where people burst into song were so stupid. Now I just wish people burst into song in real life, but the next best thing follows. Wherever possible I’m going to try to use either animatics or the full album in the version I know best for the YouTube links.

Commentary: The Musical

Well sure I loved Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog! I just happen to love the other musical it comes with even more. The novelty of the whole production is exponentially multiplied by having its own origin story and cast interviews included in the format of additional songs. Some are filler, but if you try to average it out, Commentary still wins by virtue of Zack's rap.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling

I juggled this one around my categories a bit (spoiler alert, there will be a “TV episodes” day), but I figure if I’ve bought the soundtrack, it’s a musical. My favorite is the “Under Your Spell/Standing Still” reprise, how about you? How cool is it that the actors all sang their own parts? What did you learn about your favorite characters while they were singing their hearts out? Where do we go from here?

Jekyll and Hyde

There’s a special place in my heart for the one that got me into musicals in general (I’d seen a few local productions before which failed to move me). A dear friend invited me and after we’d seen the show (pyrotechnics! dirty visual gags!), she loaned me the soundtrack and I cracked on it for months. Still can’t get over the dude singing both parts in a duet.

Les Misérables

Modern fans have a tendency to overuse the word ‘epic’, and in my opinion it’s the nature of the medium that good musicals are all pretty much epic, but if there’s one that truly deserves the title… History becomes classic novel becomes larger than life characters and songs that stir your heart. Kairos trivia: in both Les Mis and Jekyll & Hyde, my favorite song is called “Confrontation”.

RENT

This is the show that saved college for me. I was 19, just like Mimi. I had nothing else in common with any of the characters but I felt like every song was about me anyway. I can (probably) still sing it from beginning to end.

Hamilton: An American Musical

Oh man, guys, did you watch it on Disney+? Was that amazing? That was AMAZING.

Since everyone knows all about this one, there’s not much I need to say. I will note how much I appreciate getting history lessons this way, since it’s easier to amend whatever inaccuracies exist in the story than it is to remember the important stuff without catchy songs to help.

Galavant

It’s not an episode of a TV show, it’s an entire TV show! It’s a funny TV show with a high fantasy setting and it’s great and the characters burst into song on multiple occasions every episode. Weird Al shows up, which feels so right, and there’s a dragon named Tad Cooper. He’s not a lizard he’s a dragon and I super believe in him.

The Lion King

It’s all about the onstage magic -- the costumes, the puppets, the integrated sets -- but this is the first (and so far only) one I’ve seen on Broadway, so it’s all about that too; it’s all about the memory of my friend (see #5 -- same friend) and the amazing weekend in the city we had together. It’s all about The Lion King being my favorite Disney movie to begin with, and it’s all about Nala’s side of the story and “Shadowland” haunting me forever after.

Hadestown

Unlike most of my favorites, for this music the appeal isn't in quick patter and earworm potential; it's the story. The myth of Hades and Persephone is woven together with Orpheus/Eurydice and given a vaguely post-apocalyptic setting and a New Orleans vibe, and every single line serves the motivation of the characters and the themes of destiny and doubt and love.

It's incredibly beautiful. Around the halfway point, the adorkable head-in-the-clouds Orpheus finds out Eurydice is gone and he needs to do whatever it takes to find her, and the expression of his determination is so genuine and moving it's like entire volumes of character development went into a few seconds of song. The myth is barely altered, which is staggering when you think about how old it is. For humanity to hold onto a story for so long has to mean there's truth in it, so in a way, it really happened.

#hadestown #galavant #les miserables #hamilton musical #the lion king musical #commentary: the musical #jekyll and hyde #once more with feeling #rent

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kairosimperative · 3 months ago

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Day 6: Video Games

I'm not a hardcore gamer but there are times there's nothing like wasting a few hours making some meaningless progress on a brilliant work of mixed media. I’ve switched out one since the first time I did the meme but the absence of Katamari just makes me want to go play it now.

6. Stardew Valley

Okay, so this is just my most recent addiction. I had trouble tearing myself away from it long enough to even write the original post about it. Does being addictive make a game good? I don’t have time for questions like that; I’m too busy playing Stardew Valley.

If you remember Farmville and its ilk from the early 2010s, this is essentially an evolution of it. Your little sprite plants crops, sells produce to buy more seeds, earns enough to add livestock, etc. Thing is, there’s also nearby bodies of water where you can fish, plus mines full of monsters you can fight, plus a little town where you can get to know the locals and maybe marry one and have children.

I ended up marrying Shane after also dating Leah and Emily. We have the maximum number of children and I’m really bloody rich, so the only remaining goals are to catch some rare fish and maybe dig up the last few cut scenes. I still get sucked in every time I open it, thanks to my compulsive tendencies, but fortunately there’s no deadline to collect every item, follow every storyline, and max out every stat one at a time.

It’s gentle and relaxing and I almost don’t regret that it came free with my Chromebook.

5. World of Warcraft

Yup, I used to play this. It was years ago and (surprise!) I wasn’t that good at it, so I don’t know anything current about it and trust me, you don’t want me to come back and join your guild. But it’s a great game. In fact, it’s so great that I can only describe it by first listing the only two problems I have with it.

First is that in an online environment, it matters when you’re not that good. When you try to play cooperatively, your teammates get pissed at you for blundering. If you keep to yourself, you miss out on a lot of quests and can be considered rude. (I once glanced at the chat for the first time in about an hour and was surprised to find that I had been inadvertently ignoring someone’s plea to resurrect him, since I was of the class and level for it and the only one around. He had cussed and blocked me about ten minutes before I noticed. Also, I didn’t know I could get the resurrection spell.)

Second is that it’s too complete. You’ve got your realtime combat, leveling system, enormous map, social play, farming, detailed character modification, various storylines, and a full fantastical mythology and great graphics to go with it all. New content, I assume, is still being added all the time, so if you feel like playing a video game, you will never, ever run out of things to do in this one.

That’s a feature, not a bug. For that matter, so is my other complaint. I quit playing because I could see how easy it would be for my life to turn into The Guild if I continued. I also began to get bored, but that applied to video games in general -- maybe it was when marathoning quality TV became the new national geek pastime.

As of now I don’t anticipate ever wanting to play WoW again. I love the world, classic Tolkienesque/D&D-evolution fantasy with enough twist to make it its own thing, but I’d still probably want to dip my toes into a different MMORPG if I ever again happened to have the urge to succumb to that kind of timesuck. But there’s a reason that WoW is the king of its genre, and if you ask me to choose a side, I’m not going to waffle and I’m not going to say it’s irrelevant to anyone who isn’t an active player: FOR THE HORDE.

4. Tekken

To be honest, if this game didn’t give me such a warm nostalgic glow from my teenage memories of playing it with my long-distance friends whenever we were all together, it probably wouldn’t have made the list. Except, if not for those friends, I probably wouldn’t have ever played it at all. And if it weren’t such a great game, those friends probably wouldn’t have introduced me to it.

It’s a hand-to-hand fighting game that doesn’t really break the mold of the genre in any way that I can see. What made it so much fun was the massive library of special moves, unique to each character, and the skill and practice it took to pull them off. You could also get by mashing buttons, which is what I usually did, but while we were passing around the controllers, we were also sharing tips, and eventually you’re bound to make your character do something that looks really cool (and hopefully also does a lot of damage) -- on purpose!

I’ve heard that the moves are based on real martial arts, which makes sense, but the animation is the only realism to be found, and thank goodness for that. My friends and I played version 3, and at the time it seemed like the graphics were amazing. Later in life I purchased Tekken 5 for myself, and then it was the difference that was amazing. The graphics and the gameplay aren’t just the game’s best features, they’re its only features: it’s all about the illusion of detailed humans (for the most part) attacking each other without (for the most part) any magic powers, which the player can repeat over and over again just to get at all the little variations.

Nevertheless, I ended up getting attached to some of the characters. It wasn’t their ridiculous bios or cut scenes, it was the design. One is a cop who looks like Jackie Chan, two are rival sisters, one is a panda, etc. The fighting style for each one either fits the character’s appearance, or turns the character into something other than the kind of person you expected.

There’s no video game or engineered social condition that could bring back those days. But if you want to come over and slack and drink some Surge...FIGHT ME!

3. Portal

This one might be unique in that it’s the only game that had me at the preview. Someone said, “Check this out, it’s a first-person shooter puzzle game,” and I obligingly looked at his monitor to learn what that might be, and then I giggled, because the preview was funny.

I haven’t been paying attention throughout most of the history of video games, but it seems to me, or at least it did at the time, that style took a long time to catch up to technical advancement. Movies have done the same thing, to a lesser degree -- if they were showcasing an impressive display of special effects, they would skimp on the acting and the writing, and the only stylistic signature would be the norm of its era. For games, that usually meant that the humor was silly and the drama was juvenile, even (especially?) if it was meant for mature audiences.

But Portal was more than a crisply rendered environment and a novel use of physics to move through it. Portalwas witty. It was intriguing. There were increasingly difficult puzzles to solve, an overarching mystery, running jokes, disturbing or outright scary moments, and some excellent voice acting that was used sparingly for maximum effect. You never encounter another human, and can only see your avatar if you line up the portals just right, but the evil AI hounding you at every level is full of character and sometimes you want to cuddle the little robots that are trying to kill you.

Wouldn’t you know, I haven’t finished this one either (although I’ve seen the ending). Yes, I’m aware that there’s a sequel and it’s even more highly rated. By now, this list has probably revealed that there aren’t really any games I’m that good at, and that I crawl through them slowly if I like them. If I’m not spellbound, I quit early. Beginning a game that I already know I’m going to like is a pretty serious commitment that I refuse to rush into.

Speaking of commitment, I know everyone else is sick to death of Weighted Companion Cube memes but I never will be. I have the overpriced plush in the guest room, and let me tell you those things do not age well, especially if you have cats. There’s something about seeing internet jokes and fandom in the real world that I just find irresistible.

Portal was so popular that I didn’t even have to join a fandom to benefit from the memes. It’s a rare sensation to share a current obsession with the world. Thanks, Portal!

2. Pokémon Go

I’m not sure what there is to say about this game, now that we’re at the point where everyone has heard of it and many are over it. Am I over it? Not yet. I suppose it’s coming, but right now I’m still of the mindset that it’s a good thing if more people quit, because then there will be less competition at the gyms.

For someone who likes video games and 100% completion but doesn’t want to put in the requisite hours to get there, mobile app games are a dream come true. You pull them out whenever you’re stuck somewhere for a few minutes -- in line, at the bus stop, waiting for someone -- and make a modicum of progress having lost nothing. In this case, you can also redeem a walk you didn’t want to be taking, or improve one that you did, converting the “grinding” part to physical exercise and adding an element of scavenger hunt.

At least, that’s the idea. We all know that what really happens is that you get addicted to the game and before you know it you’re checking the app every time you might be able to spin a stop or win a trainer battle. If you’re in this boat with me I can’t help you. We just have to face the fact that this is what a successful game looks like.

The only goal is to Catch the proverbial ‘Em All, so eventually I’m going to have to ask myself how plausible that really is. I’m concerned that new Pokémon are being added to the game. Couldn't they have waited for me to get all of the first batch first, and then get bored with it and then come back when it’s expanded? Only seems fair.

The screenshot up top is how I look these days, though I’m sure by the time this entry is posted I’ll have a different buddy. One thing I do like about the constant updates is that I get to keep changing my clothes, and now I’m finally dressed in something I might actually wear in real life.

If you play, my Trainer Code is 1680 9654 1683. If you don’t, my Referral Code is 8CP6JH3MV.

Final Fantasy VIII

I’m not like all the other gamers. I’m special.

There are currently fifteen (soon to be sixteen) games in the main Final Fantasy series, with various spinoffs and extras. Many are very highly regarded, and rated well within the genre or indeed among all games. The eighth installment is not one of them. In fact, the eighth installment doesn’t even make most lists of the best Final Fantasy games.

Although there’s plenty I could say in defense of my favorite game, this meme is subjective and I’m well aware that the greater part of my affection came from the conditions under which I was introduced to it. I was a teenager. I had never played a video RPG, and didn’t even own a console. The game came to me along with a PSX on long-term loan from a friend, and I started it on the household’s sole TV and finished it in my freshman dorm room.

The addictive quality of single-player platform games certainly affected me, but I felt like I had discovered more than a genre. It was a new art medium, one that combined the interactive aspect with an epic fantasy story, beautiful visuals, and music (I’m fairly indifferent to the music, but it’s part of the whole). When you play, you experience the story, not because you’re controlling it, but rather the opposite -- what happens to the characters happens to you, even if you’ve strived to avoid it. I got hung up on the thought that each “Game Over” is an alternative ending to the journey: imagine that the quest to save the world could come to this, taken down by a random encounter with a Marlboro.

So it made sense to assume that the sensation had more to do with the style of game than that particular game, but nothing else has ever really won me over. I tried the much-lauded FFVII next, and I couldn’t take the grim setting seriously when it was populated by blocky little sprites. I played FFX and found the voice acting took something away instead of adding to it. FFIX might be the only other happy medium in the series, but my attempt to finally play it got swiftly sidetracked by Stardew Valley.

See, discovering a playable illustrated story is exciting, but what really mattered in the end was that FFVIII’s story was good. Early on, you learn that the characters are mercenaries, that the oldest is eighteen, and that they’re often sulky, high-strung, or unreasonable. These elements are all standard enough in an adventure-fantasy that I never gave them much thought, but later I read some articles on the game which pointed out the connection for me -- this is a story about child soldiers. They’re unstable because they went straight from an orphanage to a battle school. With that in mind, you can go straight from wanting to give Squall a good smack to wanting to give him a firm hug.

The plot wanders all over the place, of course, given that it covers a decently large world map and enough hours to make your family start kicking you off of the sole TV. You go from a train heist to an ancient temple to outer space, etc. That’s all part of the fun, but it’s the humanity that makes it memorable: Irvine revealing that he’s the only one who hasn’t lost his memory, Squall’s unexpected aptitude for leadership, Rinoa’s misgivings subtly showing through in her body language in the post-battle victory dance animation.

Over the years I returned to it periodically, on consoles of my own. I think I’m finally done, but that thought is just too sad to talk about.

#kairos 30 day meme #stardew valley #portal #final fantasy viii #world of warcraft #pokemon go #tekken

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kairosimperative · 3 months ago

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Day Five: Artists

This is entirely comic and pop artists, because that’s my solution to the dilemma I had when I mixed them together with the painters you find in fancy-schmancy European galleries. I feel much more comfortable just showing off some contemporary pictures I like looking at.

5. Lisa Frank

Yep, that Lisa Frank! Blah blah neon puppies, yadda yadda you might be a 90s kid if you remember, but I mean this with full sincerity: I love this brand. And I checked, the brand is an artist, not just a name. Ms. Frank is still around having fun with rainbows and sparkles, and to all appearances doesn’t care if she’s gone out of style. You can follow her on Instagram like I do, if you want.

One reason I wanted to change my restrictions for this category to pop art is that I have a longtime personal campaign against cultural gatekeeping. People look at Lisa Frank and wouldn’t believe anyone would consider her an artist, but the skills employed in this kind of work are the same as the ones in the pieces you see in galleries. The main difference is who it’s intended for: Lisa Frank makes art for kids, and she’s not ironic or embarrassed or preachy about it, and that’s wonderful.

4. Melody Peña

I collect Windstone sculptures, by which I mean I have one and want more. You know how the tiniest things you encounter in your childhood can end up being formative to your creative development? One of mine was a Windstone catalog. I pored over it again and again. I was picky about my mythical critters, but I couldn’t find a single thing I would change about these.

Looked up the company once I was immersed in online fantasy art fandom years later, and periodically after that. There are so many more molds now, and the classics are still there, shimmery and dramatic and warmhearted.

3. Fiona Staples

Even the best comic artists usually have some kind of subject matter they can’t draw quite as well, or a number of pages that look a bit slapdash from time to time. Except Fiona Staples. She doesn’t have a weak point. (According to her, it’s spaceships, but I have yet to find evidence.)

As a failed artist myself, I never run out of respect for illustrators who can handle every aspect of visual art from the vanishing point to the anatomy of facial expressions -- panel after panel, page after page. Don’t talk to me about “high” and “low” art. Comic books are goldmines.

2. Don Bluth

He’s an animator guy who used to work for Disney but left them for better things. If you didn’t know he’s one of your favorites too, you will soon: Secret of NIMH, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Anastasia, Titan A.E., The Land Before Time.

Yeah. All of those. A couple surprised me by their range in subject matter, but there’s still a definite style that unites them, especially in the animal characters. It’s not in the way that all Disney characters have visual similarities, either -- it’s just a Bluth thing, and bless him for it.

1. Bill Sienkiewicz

Sienkiewicz is such a comics legend that I was a little surprised to find that the series for which I know him, The New Mutants, is universally regarded as one of his greatest works. As far as I can gather from old and new commentary on the series, Marvel was throwing the dice by putting his impressionistic, sketchy, mature style into a book about innocent teenagers. It paid off in every panel and now he’s a symbol of the glory of the Silver Age of comics.

After a little exploring I found some of his work on other characters and also his original ideas, which would not be out of place in any high-end gallery. Whatever the subject matter, he goes beyond visual communication and finds beauty and wonder, as all art should.

#kairos 30 day meme #lisa frank #melody pena #fiona staples #bill sienkiewicz #don bluth

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kairosimperative · 3 months ago

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Day Three: Directors

It’s still directors/producers for this one, but I think the examples lean more toward movies now. I’ve added one since the original post.

3. Joss Whedon

Just to get it out of the way first, I think it’s safe to say that none of us actually like Joss Whedon anymore. I for one still enjoy his work without any moral quandaries holding me back, and it wasn’t even jarring to find out that he was a supreme loser. To put it in perspective, way before any of the Ray Fisher or Charisma Carpenter complaints surfaced, he once tweeted, “RELIGION + MISOGYNY + OCD = ORTHODOX RELIGION,” much like a surly 17 year old in a fedora would. I noticed, because I found it personally insulting, but I didn’t enjoy Buffy or Avengers any less; I just already knew he was a jerk before everyone else found out.

Still, it’s interesting that he brought so many of us together, and now that we’re all aware that we like Whedon TV shows, it’s easier to spark a conversation about the ways he’s disappointed us, or how we like his stuff less than we used to, than it is to talk about what we do like. His newer creations aren’t as good as the old ones, the old ones aren’t as good as we thought they were back when we discovered them, and so forth.

But let’s take a look at the lineup, in roughly chronological order, and try to be objective. There’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy is a masterpiece and I see no reason to downplay that. The iffy beginning, sagging end, and poorly conceived episodes, arcs, and elements stand out precisely because the rest of it is such a masterpiece. It’s dramatic, funny, revolutionary, emotional, exciting, and at times, deep enough to affect you in parts of yourself that aren’t normally concerned with TV. It’s everything a show should be, and it’s a sound basis for the rest of Whedon’s success.

There’s Angel, which is all of the adjectives I just listed for Buffy, except perhaps “revolutionary.” Is it a masterpiece? Probably, though I hope I’ll be forgiven for assuming it required less creative genius from Joss: not only was he not fully in charge, but the show had the benefit of being a spin-off, so a lot of the genius already existed. There’s Firefly, which is known mostly for what could have been, and that’s fair. It’s hard not to think about all of the unused potential, but whether you’re a diehard Browncoat or a standard fan wishing everyone would shut up about this one show being canceled prematurely, this is one of the most watchable seasons of television out there.

There’s Dollhouse, that sad little low-rated experiment. I liked it. I liked how different it was from the three listed above, and I liked watching it wobble and ultimately stand up. There’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which most people have now forgotten about but if they saw it they’d love it.

This is about where we come to the movies. Personally, I think that, considering the pieces that were already in place, both of his Avengers movies could not have come out any better than they did. If you didn’t like the first one, you probably either don’t like superheroes, or you like superheroes so much that no adaptation will ever satisfy you. If you didn’t like the second one...well, feelings got more complicated as the MCU got older, so let’s leave that alone.

Cabin in the Woods and Much Ado About Nothing were both released during the slow decline of my Whedon obsession, and neither horror nor Shakespeare is really up my alley. I loved them both anyway. It’s entirely possible that I loved them both because any appearance from any member of the Whedonverse cast made me giddy, but shouldn’t he get some credit for that anyway? The man knew how to pick his actors.

One thing that always comes up when you talk about his work is the snappy dialogue. I adore the snappy dialogue. I always tell people I don’t like comedy and they think I don’t like humor, but actually I just prefer it when it’s mixed into another genre. All else remaining the same I would still probably lose interest in this entire list if Joss didn’t keep making me laugh.

More than that, though - and more than the plot twists, worldbuilding, genuine thrills, and unique concepts - what we’ll always remember him for is his characters. Buffy Summers, Angel, River Tam, and Dr. Horrible aren’t just populating their respective settings; they’re the engines of their stories, the reason we care. They’re surrounded by varied personalities who interact with them in complicated relationships. It feels like our own world made new, speculative impossibilities made familiar. In the end, people are the only part of life that really matters, and sometimes even the Joss Whedons of the world can understand that.

2. James Gunn

It took me longer than it should have to realize that this guy is one of my favorites. Yeah, I was outraged and vocal when Disney fired him, and overjoyed when he was rehired (still am), but the truth is that I had barely watched any of his movies aside from the Marvel ones, and now The Suicide Squad. Horror doesn’t interest me and I’ve always avoided Scooby-Doo. I did watch the Gunn version of Battle Royale on a plane once, and it was just moderately entertaining.

Ordinarily I would say this disqualifies him, since for this category I’m looking for people who do lots of things I love, not just one thing I really, really love. I think I have to allow the exception here, not so much because there’s something beyond my treasured Guardians of the Galaxy in the four MCU movies he’s worked on, but because whenever Gunn is involved, I can see his hand in it.

I’m not the only one. He’s an executive producer on Infinity War and Endgame, and it was made clear at the time that his role was to make sure that the Guardians were in character. You know how many different MCU franchises were combined in those two movies? How many different directors worked on them? Most of these people are pretty competent and all of them have handled characters created by someone else. But only one superhero team needed to stick with the same director that brought them in.

Seriously, that’s why we pushed back so hard against losing him as the GotG Vol. 3 director. Those movies, that franchise, those characters are his, regardless of what studio owns them or how they tie into the rest of the shared universe. We didn’t have to stop and think about what the next movie would be like without him; we knew anyone else would muck it up.

I just recently got my chance to watch The Suicide Squad, and I’m pretty sure it constitutes proof that Gunn is the sole director capable of turning out masterpieces for both Marvel and DC. The parallels to Guardians of the Galaxy are obvious, so maybe I’m just really into the criminals-team-up-and-become-heroes formula, but it seems like it must be a really difficult one to handle well, and he did. I fell in love with every character, especially Ratcatcher, and rats aren’t even my favs. (Weasels are, though.)

Hayao Miyazaki

Anime might have an undeserved reputation for being juvenile, mass-produced, and fetishistic. Another way of looking at it is that the reputation is entirely deserved. Either way, all it takes to see the medium used as an art form is any film from Studio Ghibli - hell, any one frame from any film from Studio Ghibli.

Miyazaki’s trademarks go beyond quality in every aspect of each work, and even beyond his artistic style. In his stories there’s always a source of hope, even when things go very, very wrong, and a chance to adapt to an unknown world or a serious loss. Nature is invaluable and threatened, and human life is sacred and fleeting. To love someone is to learn from them.

At the heart of (almost) every movie is a girl or young woman with a difficult task ahead of her. She’s brave and competent and there isn’t really anything else you can say about her, because Miyazaki does not ever use the same character twice. He doesn’t have a “brave competent central heroine” mold; each girl is herself and no one else, and she’s going to accomplish her task in her own way.

Princess Mononoke was the first one I saw, and has always remained my favorite. It’s also a good representation of Miyazaki’s work as a whole, since all the essential elements I mentioned above are there, and the setting (mythologized historical Japan) encompasses all of his most impressive visual subjects: sprawling natural landscapes, pre-industrial machinery and vehicles, mythical animals, real animals, people with varied body types and dark, inquisitive eyes. Every time I rewatch it I feel incredulous when I notice that the animation is still as good as anything being produced today, and when a line of dialogue reveals something I never realized before, and when the plot unfolds and I remember how intricately it’s constructed.

Maybe the best way to discover something new is when you have an experience like that the first time, and then the next time is even better, and like I said, Mononoke is still my favorite so I didn’t get to take that route into Studio Ghibli. But you know what makes it okay? I’ve never been disappointed by any of the movies I’ve seen since then. Not for a second! Not even “this is good but I wish it were better.” If I had to choose a least favorite, I’d probably go with Ponyo, and that’s really just because I get so fed up with the mother character’s irresponsible driving. Ponyo is an awesome movie, with prehistoric fish.

Full disclosure, of course, demands I also note that I haven’t seen everything, and that some of those I have seen have left me with only fuzzy memories of general enjoyment rather than a lasting impact. The former category is mostly the newer ones, like The Boy and the Heron. The latter includes The Cat Returns, Porco Rosso, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Castle in the Sky. I’m always up for rewatching any of these if you ever want to (and if I can easily obtain it).

The second one I saw was Spirited Away, which uses the timeless “Wonderland” structure and involves an Eastern dragon. My second favorite is My Neighbor Totoro, which is so relaxing and uplifting that to watch it feels like being on the receiving end of a healing spell. The last one I saw in theaters was Howl’s Moving Castle, which makes me think of turnips and hair like starlight. The most universally appealing one is Kiki’s Delivery Service, which is worth watching subbed just for Jiji’s Japanese voice actor. The silliest and also the most spit-take inducing is Pom Poko, and at the other extreme is Grave of the Fireflies, which is not for children and hurts deeply. They’re both amazing films, but my recommendation for either one will come with a caution to brace yourself.

While I often find myself shrugging off bits of Joss Whedon’s work that I don’t like or which simply fall short, I’m hard pressed to think of any weakness in anything that Hayao Miyazaki has ever done. Maybe I haven’t found it yet or maybe I just haven’t noticed it. But if so, I can only chalk that up to the overwhelming amount of artistry, wisdom, and dedication that he brings to his work. I regret human mortality, knowing that there won’t be anyone like him again.

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