#they’re so fun… I love stylising them I need to stylise them even MORE next time

[rocket-powered-socket]

IM NOT LATE FOR PRIDE MONTH QUIET

I don’t think any of the machines in this show are cishet have you seen them… I wanted to draw more of the characters in the show but I’ve been so busy this is last minute enough as it is. HAPPY PRIDE MONTH BOB FANDOM these creatures mean the world to me

These are my own personal hcs btw :•]

[googledocsdyke]

for communitynatural: i think it's interesting that while abed & cas are paralleled, as well as dean & troy, abed and dean speak in near constant references because that's how they relate to the world, while cas and troy just. say things. because they aren't scared of being emotional

ALRIGHT unfortunately this is gonna be long. i wanna deconstruct the cas/troy thing but i’m gonna put a pin in that for now because you’re right! but you’re also wrong! both abed and dean constantly mediate the world through pop culture, in a way that initially makes them seem really similar, but actually when you look at the respective ways their References and Homages work, it actually highlights how different their characters are, and how well they work as foils (different, complementary) rather than mirrors (similar, paralleled)

i think the key difference is that abed uses pop culture to make sense of the world, while dean uses it to make sense of himself. like abed has a very clear & coherent internal sense of who he is, and he's comfortable with it. he knows that who he is isn't someone the world always perceives as "acceptable" or "normal", so sometimes he uses pop culture to translate that person into something or someone “acceptable” readable by the world. but it never actually modifies his internal sense of who he is! key moment: in early season 1, where the study group is intent on making him over so that a girl will like him, and "teaching" him to be "normal". he goes along with it, and when the plan fails, they all express regret that they somehow damaged his self-esteem by forcing him to think that he needed to change for other people. and you know what he says?

"when you really know who you are and what you like about yourself, changing for other people isn't such a big deal." like this is a line that is SO key to understanding abed's character, and makes him like truly one of the best characters on television (it would've been so easy for his internal conflict to come from him hating himself for being autistic(-coded), and they DON'T do that, and it's GREAT) 

and like. can you IMAGINE dean winchester saying that. like can you imagine him saying that even as a joke. for all his efforts to present himself as a Coherent Swaggering Hero, he has DEEP internal turmoil over who he really is, and all the points at which this heroic masculinity fails. half the time, he is gripped by self-hatred. and when he "changes himself for other people" it's not something he casually flips on and off. it's at the very core of his identity. it's something he cannot remove from himself. he knows full well that "your taste in music? dad's. your jacket? dad's. do you even have an original thought?" he then proceeds to listen to the same music and emulate john winchester in essentially the same ways for the next decade and a half.  dean winchester only IS dean winchester because of the external influences that force him to change. and part of this comes from his own compulsion to be written as/write himself as Hot Action Hero at all costs. like literally at the cost of his own life. it's a game that he can't stop playing. when he gets hit by a CAR he wants to know "did it look cool, like in the movies?" abed would never ask that. abed would just know it looks cool. dean has this pathological need to see it reaffirmed by an Audience, a Ceaseless Beholding Gaze that compels him to perform action hero masculinity at all costs

there are two key points of comparison that really cement this for me:

when abed says "i got self-esteem falling out of my butt," it's like an incredibly sincere line. he genuinely is comfortable with himself and has a high opinion of himself. sure, sometimes he gets distressed that the world doesn't see him the way he sees himself, but he knows who he is and doesn't attempt to repress it or lie to himself about it

when dean says "i think i'm adorable" or "there are no men like me" or like any of the "i am dean winchester and i'm amazing and i love myself" swagger lines, it's a PERFORMANCE of self esteem masking, like, a deep core of self-hatred. his entire personhood is built on him lying to himself — (dean to himself in 5x04 voice: i know that lying face i've seen him in the mirror). he can't truly have self-esteem or self-stability because he doesn't truly have a sense of what his Self even is

the han solo thing. in the season 2 finale during the paintball war, abed very consciously takes on a han solo persona because the setting demands it ("it appears we've exited the western and are headed for more of a star wars theme"). he dressed up as han, drops an iconic line or two, and has a Hero's Makeout with annie (who’s “playing” leia) in-character. but as SOON as they're both soaked in paint (and thus their characters are Dead within the game) he snaps out of it with no problem whatsoever. annie calls him "han" afterwards and he literally says he only did it “because the context demanded it.” abed knows exactly when he’s playing a role and when he isn’t, and very consciously turns it on and off.

but dean. OH DEAN WINCHESTER. he is playing the pop culture han solo hero role at all times and will never admit to himself that he is performing. it soaks into like the very core of his being. to quote tumblr user minor-mendings, “dean is trying to be the movie cowboy, the outlaw, the han solo type, with no realisation that that person doesn’t really exist.” i go over this in more detail with my han solo + dean meta - in so many ways he is So Thoroughly Not the pop cultural role that he insists on playing with complete sincerity, and that the writers insist on writing him into with complete sincerity. abed always knows when he is Playing and Referencing and Homaging and Alluding. dean NEVER knows when he is Playing and Referencing and Homaging and Alluding because his whole life is play, an elaborate repetition of stylised acts

so you're right, i think dean and abed are really interesting characters to read alongside each other in that they both 1) sincerely love pop culture in its own right in very fun and neurodivergent ways and 2) use their pop culture knowledge in their own self-fashioning and the way they translate themselves to the world and 3) engage with the world through Homage and Play and enjoy playing Roles. HOWEVER. the way they respectively use pop culture is so deeply different and indicative of fundamentally different processes of self-fashioning and self-perception, that i can't read abed as a dean-figure or dean as an abed-figure. they're complete inverses of each other! dean is a troy mirror/troy-figure and an abed foil

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 49: How translators approach a text

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 49: How translators approach a text. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 49 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about the relationship of the translator and the text. But first, we’re heading into Lingthusiasm anniversary month! This is our fourth anniversary of doing Lingthusiasm, and we’re really excited that we’re still doing this four years later.

Lauren: We love a bit of reflection and nostalgia. The month of November is always an opportunity to be grateful that we have another year of Lingthusiasm. We have a whole 12 great main episodes. We have 12 more bonus episodes. As with every year, if you want to share a link to your favourite episode, November is an especially nice time to do it.

Gretchen: There are still people in this world who don’t know that they could be listening to a fun podcast about linguistics that makes them feel like they’re at a linguistics party instead of doing the dishes. You could help people find them. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth. Every year we’ve done this in November, we see a big spike in people listening to the show and finding the show. If you wanna share on social media, we are very happy to thank you if you tag us in things.

Lauren: If you want to share off social media, please accept our deepest gratitude non-publicly for sharing shows as well.

Gretchen: Or, if you share Lingthusiasm privately and you still wanna be thanked, feel free to tell us about it on social media. We will still give you a little heart thank you comment. Yes, thank you already for all of the support that you’ve given the show over the years.

Lauren: If you like things additional to podcasts, because we are coming up to the holiday season, it’s also a good time to think about some Lingthusiasm merch or a copy of Because Internet. It’s a pretty great book. I like it. It’s available in paperback now. These things make great gifts.

Gretchen: We now also have annual memberships on Patreon. That could make a great gift to gift somebody to listen to more Lingthusiasm episodes as well as access to the Discord for an online linguistics community.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was about honorifics as a way of being polite to someone either through the title you choose or a variety of linguistic strategies.

Gretchen: You get access to the honorifics bonus as well as 43 other bonus episodes and new bonus episodes every month by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, Lauren, I’m gonna talk to you about Beowulf.

Lauren: I know this because you have been messaging me for weeks about how we have to talk about Beowulf.

Gretchen: There’s a new translation of Beowulf. I’m really excited. This made me want to build an entire episode around the translator’s relationship to the text because this new translation of Beowulf does a really cool job of it, and I wanna talk about it.

Lauren: I don’t think you’ve been this excited about a translated text since Emily Wilson translated The Odyssey. I’m pretty sure that’s what motivated our 18th episode on word translation.

Gretchen: You are not wrong about this. I think there’s a similar excitement that I have which is old texts – texts that are a thousand-plus years old that have been translated so many different times by so many different people – it feels like it’s hard for someone to do something new with a translation of them. And yet, here people are doing that, which is exciting to me. This is the new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. She’s done some really cool things with translating Beowulf as a feminist text. It’s a text that uses very modern style language in this thousand-year-old epic poem of Old English literature.

Lauren: I feel like when it comes to translating, before you even translate one single word, there’s all these decisions that a translator has to make. In Episode 18, we looked at translation, but we looked at word-to-word translation. And that’s definitely one part of a translator’s job, but they have so many more decisions to make. It is such an impressive job, and it’s why it’s as much an art form as it is a technical skill to translate something well. So, what are some of the big decisions that Headley made before even starting to translate Beowulf?

Gretchen: One of the things about Beowulf is, as an oral poem, it has this intricate rhyme scheme. The Old English rhyme scheme is based on half lines. Each line has two halves and there needs to be an alliterative bit in one half that is repeated in the second half.

Lauren: So, Old English is way more interested in alliteration compared to our modern English obsession with rhyming. That’s one of the stylistic features you find in Old English.

Gretchen: It’s all about the beginning of the words rather than the ends. Trying to figure out, okay, how much am I gonna use alliteration? How much am I gonna try to represent – because we can do alliteration in modern English – how much am I gonna try to represent the existing rhyme scheme? Where am I gonna try to put it in actual rhymes like you would do in modern English – if you’re writing a poem, you might rhyme it? What am I gonna do with the metre? She’s produced this really oral text that uses a certain amount of modern slang as well in ways that are really effective. One example is there’s a dragon in Beowulf, and the dragon at one point is described as “Putting the world on blast.”

Lauren: Nice.

Gretchen: To some extent, this is modern slang, but it’s also a very literal thing that a dragon can do. It’s not using modern slang for gratuitous – like, there’s no “lols” or “omgs” in this text. It’s not like here’s this facile text-speak version of Beowulf. It’s what are the bits here that actually work with the metre and the rhyme scheme but also not shying away from using a modern idiom where a modern idiom really works.

Lauren: It’s interesting to put this in contrast to the other most famous version of Beowulf in translation that I know of which is Seamus Heaney’s from somewhere in the middle of the 20th Century where I feel like he tried to capture the mythical grandeur of Old English and chose very stoic, solid sounding Old English words. I don’t think he would’ve had the dragon “putting the world on blast.”

Gretchen: Well, I don’t think he would’ve – I think it came out in 1999, this translation. In some ways his translation is fairly vernacular, but he tries to do that in a different sense. Can I read you the first bit of the Headley translation and the Heaney translation?

Lauren: Yeah. This is super fun.

Gretchen: Okay. A big thing about Beowulf translations is the first word which in Old English is “Hwaet.” That has gotten repurposed as a meme, which we’re not gonna get into much detail about. Some people translate that as like, “Lo!” or “Hark!” or “Listen!” or something like this. Heaney translates that as “So,” which has already got a certain level of vernacularity to it. His first three lines go, “So, the Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.” This is very stately and like, “Here’s this thing you’re gonna do.” If you compare that with the first three lines of the Headley translation, the new one, she translates this “Hwaet” as “Bro.”

Lauren: Hm, that’s a very different tone.

Gretchen: It’s a very modern tone. I mean, you could pick a whole bunch of very modern things like “Yo” or “Hey all,” but specifically the reason she picks “Bro” is because she wants to highlight the bro culture-ness of this entire story. You can see that in the next couple lines which is, “Bro, tell me we still know how to speak of kings. In the old days, everyone knew what men were – brave, bold, glory bound. Only stories now, but all sound the Spear-Dane song, hoarded for hungry times.” It just leaps off the page in a way that really excites me.

Lauren: Yeah, no “princes” there.

Gretchen: Right. “Kings who ruled had courage and greatness” – “The men were bold.”

Lauren: The thing I always love about Beowulf is that it’s a millennium-old oral poem that happened to be written down, and a millennium ago people were like, “Let me tell you about the olden days.” [Laughter]

Gretchen: Right, it still takes place in this semi-mythic space, and it uses a certain stylised language that we even think was stylised at the time. You’re always picking between some kind of stylisation. There’s no neutral choice that exists. All of the choices are recreations at some level.

Lauren: I mean, it is kind of weird to think you’re translating from English into English, but it just shows how much the language has moved on because reading Beowulf if you don’t know Old English is an incredibly uncomfortable attempt to just guess some words that have retained some familiarity. I always find it interesting that you have to translate. And then because English went through enough changes by Shakespeare, we kind of put up with all of the features of Shakespeare that aren’t immediately obvious to us.

Gretchen: Right. But Beowulf is really this alien text. Like, “Hwaet. We Gardena” – and “Gardena” is “Spear-Danes,” but we don’t have “Spear-Danes,” and “Gardena” is not obviously related to those. There’s this great miniseries from The History of English Podcast that does a very in-depth line-by-line reading of Beowulf which I enjoyed a while back.

Lauren: My one semantic anecdote from that series is “Gar-Danes” as in “Spear-Danes” – garlic is the “spear-leek.”

Gretchen: Yes, it is!

Lauren: Because it’s like a little spear.

Gretchen: It’s like a little spear-leek. I love that anecdote. It’s interesting to be reading Beowulf at the same time that my book club is actually reading The Tale of Genji.

Lauren: Ah, from like a similar – Genji’s also a millennium old, yeah?

Gretchen: Yeah! In some sense it’s like Beowulf and Genji are kind of contemporaries.

Lauren: But they’re very much not contemporaries. Beowulf is about warrior bro culture in the Old English setting, whereas Genji is a Japanese court drama.

Gretchen: I don’t think they would’ve gotten along. I think they would’ve just found each other completely incomprehensible. Genji’s also one of those classic texts that’s been translated a whole bunch of different times in a whole bunch of different ways. For one thing, you’re translating from a much older version of Japanese. There are modern Japanese translations of The Tale of Genji as well. And then you’re also translating into a different cultural context. But the cultural context for Beowulf is also very weird. Like, I don’t do going and fighting monsters under lakes any more than I do writing haikus about the moon. In fact, I’m probably more likely to write a haiku about the moon than I am to go fight a monster under a lake if we wanna talk about relatability.

Lauren: Everything I know about Genji is because one of my colleagues in the Languages Department at La Trobe is a Genji studies scholar. It’s one of those pieces of work that is so big and so canonical that it has its own literary studies tradition associated with it. I also really love my colleague because the other part of her expertise is cosplay studies. I think it’s such a great combination of Japanese cultural experience there – Genji and cosplay.

Gretchen: I mean, what more do you want? The neat thing about reading Tale of Genji at the moment is because I’m reading it as part of a book club through Argo Bookshop – which is a bookstore that did the book launch party for Because Internet and I really like them – they’re having this Tale of Genji book club, and we’ve been reading it throughout the year a few chapters at a time because it’s over 1,000 pages. It’s huge. So, we’ve been reading it section by section, and different members of the book club have picked different translations into English of the same work.

Lauren: Ah, cool! Are there radical differences between the translations? Or do they all try and go for a literal approach?

Gretchen: They’re really different. One of the big things with Genji is at the time in 11th Century Japan it was considered very rude in the court to refer to people by their actual names. None of the characters in the original Tale of Genji manuscript have names, except for maybe Genji. So, you can imagine reading a thousand-page book where none of the characters have names is a bit of a feat of the imagination.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: Different translations – and a lot of them have conventional names that literary scholars have used to talk about the characters. For example, Lady Fujitsubo lives in the Fujitsubo, which is the western pavilion, and so she gets called in the tradition “Fujitsubo” because that’s where she lives, and this kind of stuff. Or Murasaki gets called that after a flower, I think, the character. In some translations, they just use these conventional use names as if they’re the actual names of the characters. In some translations, they just use descriptions like the original text did, and they don’t really refer to characters by even pretend names or use names.

Lauren: So, one of them is trying to strive for cultural authenticity, and the other one is trying to just help the poor confused reader a little bit more, and that’s choices that each translator has decided to make.

Gretchen: Exactly. You also have other types of decisions like, “Are you going to try to” – because it’s a court drama, you have all these court positions. Are you going try to map those positions onto a western court so that people understand what a chancellor is? Or are you going to try to use those as a more direct translation of what the specific terms were at the time? That’s just different decisions that different translations can use.

Lauren: When you meet as a book club, is everyone following along, or is there a lot of clarifying across translations? Such an interesting little exercise.

Gretchen: Well, the nice thing is, is the division into different chapters is very constant, so we can be like, “Okay, we’re reading Chapters 6 to 10 now. We’re gonna talk about what happens in those.” But sometimes you do pull something up, and you’re like, “Okay, so this bit where this thing was said, do we think Genji is kinda misogynistic here?” And somebody will say, “Well, in my translation, it doesn’t actually seem like he’s misogynistic.” And here’s what’s going on in this particular translation versus that particular translation. And how much of it is the translator bringing their own preconceived notions of how people relate to each other? Because some of these translations are from the 1920s or something. People may have had different politics there. And how much of that is in the original text which was composed by a woman who we don’t know that much about? But it’s the first modern novel. It’s an interesting like, “How much are you going to try to westernise this book for a western audience?” Which some of the older translations do a bit more with the westernisation adaptation because people in the west hadn’t heard of Genji very much before. You do all this adaptation for your English-speaking readers. Whereas, more recent translators, people tend to have a higher degree of expectations of fidelity when it comes to a more modern translation. Sometimes they try to do that. And, you know, how many footnotes do you have? How much do you try to explain additionally? How much do you try to just make the text stand on its own as a story?

Lauren: So many choices to make as a translator. I’m eternally grateful to people who do this and make it appear so effortless while doing so much work bringing all of this context together.

Gretchen: It’s really neat. I’m not gonna read this 1,000-page book five different times in five different translations, but being able to experience portions of those translations vicariously through other people talking about, “Oh, here’s what happened in this one, here’s what happened in this one,” it does let you do this interesting comparative textual study.

Lauren: I’ve been thinking about translation in practice a lot lately because having worked with P. M. Freestone on their Shadowscent books, “The Darkets Bloom” and “Crown of Smoke,” these books have gone into translation in a whole bunch of languages, mostly European languages to date – Spanish, German, French, Russian, and Polish. I’m very excited about the upcoming Hungarian translation which will the first outside of the Indo-European language. But these translations involve a couple of things that are really interesting in that, in these books, I worked on creating the Aramteskan language, and for this language to work across different languages, sometimes it gets technically transliterated, or you need to add a different type of plural. For example, Russian has a different alphabet to English and so you need to fit this language into the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

Gretchen: You’re not trying to pretend that Aramteskan is always written with the Latin alphabet. Even when the book itself is in Russian, you’re like, we’re gonna transliterate it into Cyrillic?

Lauren: No, translators have very much done what they think is most appropriate. I have a habit of buying these translations now and checking out what they’ve done because they’re not just translating from English into another language, they also have to translate this completely fictional language and this fictional world into that language as well. It’s one thing to maybe study in-depth Old English warrior culture or Japanese court culture and decide what to bring across, but with a fantasy world, there’s all kinds of choices you have to make as a translator as well.

Gretchen: Yeah, like what are you gonna do with the magic system? Or if you’ve invented all of these words for different scents or something, then they have to figure out some sort of equivalent of inventing those words for the other language.

Lauren: There’s a lot of scent vocabulary even in the English that P. M. Freestone has written in, so really taxing that part of the translator’s repertoire. One thing that’s been particularly interesting and that there’s been some discussion on how to manage is that in this world, both in the historical part of the world and the contemporary part of the world, the culture and the grammar allow for gender neutral third person like the English modern use of “they,” which Kirby Conrod gave a great interview about how that works in contemporary English. In fact, I did a little historical evolution of the pronoun system that fits with the story of the world where originally there was no gender distinction in the pronoun system, which fits with the old religious system of the world. And the religious system evolved younger gods that are all gendered, and the pronoun system evolved genders at the same time while still having that scope for gender neutral. Without spoiling too much, but a character that pops up in Book One and is much more a part of Book Two is gender fluid within the world. That works for current English because we have gender neutral singular they, but there are some languages like Czech or like Russian that the book’s being translated into where there isn’t that flexibility in the linguistic system. So, decisions have to be made about how that is negotiated in the translation.

Gretchen: Do you know what they did?

Lauren: I don’t know what they did for Russian yet, but I believe the solution in Czech is at various times this character is overtly identified using masculine and at other times using feminine – being much more flexible about the duality of their relationship with gender.

Gretchen: This reminds me of a thing that I heard Ada Palmer talk about at a conference panel with her book “Too Like the Lightning” and the sequels, which are set in this far future of English – well, far future and they’re written in English – in which singular they is used for everybody except when you’re writing in this faux-archaic style with “thous” and “thees” and “hes” and “shes.” It’s very marked at that point. Ada Palmer was talking about how this was translated into French where in modern English the progressive thing that people do is like, “Oh, we can use singular they. That’s very progressive.” In modern French, the progressive thing that people do is they make feminine versions of all of the professions.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: You have feminine versions of “professor” or “doctor” or these kinds of things to try and make the gender more visible. And so erase the gender in the French version wouldn’t have the same effect – where you’d end up using the default masculine or something in the French version – it wouldn’t have the same effect as using singular they all the time in the English version. There are modern French pronouns like “iel” that have been coined to solve this problem of using a gender neutral third person pronoun, but it wouldn’t work to use them in this particular case because the style is supposed to be faux-archaic. What the translator ended up doing was digging out this French pronoun “on,” which in the modern form “on” is used like “we” or like “one does this.” It’s related to like, “One does this.” There’s an older usage of “on” which is like a non-specific third person pronoun as well that – I speak French, but I didn’t know about this archaic form. And the translator went and looked for what other historic pronoun things could I do and ended up doing with “on” thing, which is a really interesting adaptation.

Lauren: The thing I find interesting is if you were – 50 years ago, you didn’t have the grammatical resources in English to use singular they for a specific person. It’s something that’s really only emerged in the last couple of decades. I think the translator has felt frustrated to not have – you know, you sometimes feel like you’ve got this road block because you don’t have resources in one language that you have in another and you have to innovate. I did have a colleague in Italian studies tell me that they read a whole novel once where the gender of one of the characters was deliberately written around and avoided in a way that was an incredibly artful, thoughtful translation. It is possible that you could maybe do this with this character in the Shadowscent books, but it would be such –

Gretchen: But you couldn’t do it with the whole world in the Terra Ignota books because all of the characters would have to have that.

Lauren: Yeah. And you could do that amount of heavy lifting at the cost of some other things, but when you’re doing an efficient translation for a commercial novel, you don’t have the resources to really max out your art and strategy in that way. It’s interesting that, you know, translation is a really resource-intensive activity even to just do a good translation, let alone an incredibly strategic and thoughtful translation.

Gretchen: Even translating one word, like that word at the beginning of Beowulf, involves thinking about, “Okay, what kind of relationship do I want this word to have to the rest of the text? What am I trying to set up here in relationship to the whole text? Where do I see this attention-getting word as going?” Like, what the text as a whole is doing, which is this interesting question. I should say, speaking of translation news, this is very hot off the presses, but I have received news that there are gonna be translations of Because Internet into Persian, Chinese, and Japanese. So, all – well, Persian is an Indo-European language, but it has a different writing system, and then two non-Indo-European languages. I don’t know anything else about the details yet.

Lauren: This is news that I didn’t even know. This is very exciting.

Gretchen: It’s very recent, yes. It’s not – I dunno. I will have official links when they exist. They won’t exist for, I dunno, probably a couple years. I dunno how long it’ll take them to do. I know nothing.

Gretchen: The surreal thing about translation means that you will see you work and not be able to read it. There’s something so amazing and magical about that, that words you have created are finding new audiences – you know, there’s a lot of trust in the translator in those contexts.

Gretchen: Yeah, and I don’t know if I’m gonna get to have any say in who they get to translate it and how much they know about the internet or things like that.

Lauren: Translating non-fiction is an entirely different process because you’re not translating an internal narrative world as much as you are potentially translating something that explains how this world that we live in right now exists, or how a set of historical realities existed. That also takes deftness and skill.

Gretchen: And you’re potentially trying to translate technical vocabulary between one language or another, which isn’t necessarily the same as, “Okay, we need to keep the characters’ names consistent. It’s like, “We need to use this word that has a technical meaning in its technical sense.” Speaking of non-fiction translation, I dunno if you’ve been following in translation news relatively recently, there’s been a lot of things going on with the Scots language Wikipedia.

Lauren: Yes, I did read about this. So, Scots language is a language in the same family as English. It has a lot of similarities with English but is considered its own “variety,” using that very deliberate linguist term where you don’t commit to just how much it’s a dialect or its mutual intelligibility with other varieties that its related to. And it has its own Wikipedia.

Gretchen: Scots is kind of like, as an English speaker, I’ve always been kind of jealous of people who speak Dutch or German or something because they can kind of understand each other a bit. Or Spanish and Portuguese and Italian because they can kind of approximate understanding each other to some extent even if they haven’t formally learned the languages. I’ve always been like, “Why doesn’t English have some closer neighbours?” But I hadn’t been thinking about Scots when I was thinking that. Scots is probably English’s closest neighbour but is still a distinct language and, especially, there are grammatical differences and there are a lot of political reasons as well why people consider it its own language. However, [laughs] the Scots language Wikipedia, which has all of these articles written in Scots, had apparently been being edited for the last seven years by an American teenager who didn’t know any Scots and was just looking up the English articles in a Scots-English dictionary word-by-word and just picking the first word of the translation and subbing that in for the Scots word.

Lauren: This has been such a difficult story to read because everyone throughout this process has acted in the best faith. This teenager wasn’t doing this for any reason other than a passion for sharing knowledge on Wikipedia and a passion for seeing the Scots Wikipedia grow but with a really uncritical approach to translation. You can see where translation really does require this understanding of vocabulary choice and style choice and how it can all go really, really wrong.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s really painful because this person started when they were, like, 12, and we have all believed very foolish things about the world when we were 12. It’s just many of us didn’t write thousands of Wikipedia articles in a language that is just really not the way anybody who actually speaks this language actually writes because it’s cobbled together badly from a dictionary. It’s this very painful, “Oh, no! You thought you were helping.” And yet Wikipedia is used as the basis of a lot of machine translation, and language detection, various natural language processing tools, and so this has been potentially sabotaging the efforts to try to create other machine tools in Scots because they’ve all been in this weird dictionary-a-fied version of English.

Lauren: It’s been really heartening to see the Scots language community and the Scottish Wikipedia community come together to figure out a strategy for how to approach cleaning house – I guess it’s the biggest spring clean ever, right – how to approach this, like, thousands and thousands of articles with this very strange approach to translation.

Gretchen: It illuminates one of the issues with smaller language Wikipedias in general which is that they may only have a few active editors because to be a Wikipedia editor is to be a volunteer. It takes a long time to translate things or to write articles. If you’re a language like English, you can have tens of thousands of editors. But if you’re a language like Scots which has many fewer speakers, you may only have a dozen active editors of which maybe one of them is a well-meaning but very clueless American teenager.

Lauren: We’ve both done lots of Wikipedia editing. We have run LingWiki events to improve linguistics content on Wikipedia. It’s challenging enough to write these articles in one language that I am proficient in. I’m always in awe of people who choose to translate and support content in their second or third languages because it is a non-trivial task to translate really complicated information in a way that is really clear.

Gretchen: Translation is a technical task that is one of those things that looks at all of the different levels of language where you have some things at the individual word, or even sound, or if you’re trying to translate poetry and you wanna make it beautiful in a very aesthetic sense with the physical properties of language, all the way up to words and sentences and structure and these discourse-y particles like “Hwaet” at the beginning where you’re trying to picture a whole framing device for the structure of an entire tone of a narrative. Or if you’re trying to pick, “Okay, how are we going to treat technical vocabulary that maybe has been borrowed from English?” because its scientific vocabulary that was invented from English, how are you gonna treat that when it gets borrowed into Scots? Trying to figure out how to make these technical decisions is non-trivial. It’s this very interesting train wreck. It can go spectacularly right when you have this very clever decision for a dragon to put the world on blast, and it can also go spectacularly wrong when you just say, “Okay, I’m gonna look through a dictionary and then pick the first word I encounter.”

Lauren: One of the great things about appreciating a good translation is that language never takes a break. Culture continues to change, and we move further away from the era of Beowulf. We move into new cultural settings and new cultural expectations. It means that there is space for new translations that bring new approaches, or try something different, or aim for really capturing something about the language of the era it was created in, or set an old story in a radically new setting. Even when you find a really satisfying translation, you know there’s still possibilities for finding other interesting ways to engage with the text.

Gretchen: I think that’s a thing that’s exciting about both the translations of these thousand-year-old texts, whether Beowulf or Tale of Genji, where they go through lots of different authors who put their own spin on the translation. And also thinking of Wikipedia as a place for translation where you have multiple authors working together on the same shared text, and a bunch of different people – like Scots Wikipedia has been having these Wikipedia edit-a-thons to try to clean the place up. You have a whole bunch of contributors that are finding out about this need because of this story and coming in and working on the text together and contributing to the shared text. In many ways, even though each of these editions of the translations are published as their own book for book-length ones, it’s this very intimate relationship that you can have with a text when you’re trying to render it in a different language or in a different textual interpretation.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can access to 44 bonus episodes right now to listen to at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patron also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards as well as helping to keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include pangrams, honorifics, and linguistics with kids. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life, especially as it’s the anniversary month.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #482

Top Ten Sega Games

So I read somewhere on the internet that in June it’s the thirtieth birthday of Sonic the Hedgehog (making him only a couple of months younger than my brother, which is weird). This is due to his debut game, the appropriately-titled Sonic the Hedgehog, being first released on June 23rd. As such – and because I do love a good Tenuous Link – I’ve decided to dedicate this week’s list to Sega (also there was that Sonic livestream and announcement of new games, so I remain shockingly relevant).

I’ve got a funny relationship with Sega, largely because I’ve got a funny relationship with last century’s consoles in general. As I’ve said before, I never had a console growing up, and never really felt the need for one; I came from a computing background, playing on other people’s Spectrums and Commodores before getting my own Amiga and, later, a PC. And I stuck with it, and that was fine. But it does mean that, generally speaking, I have next to zero nostalgia for any game that came out on a Nintendo or Sega console (or Sony, for that matter). I could chew your ear off about Dizzy, or point-and-click adventure games, or Team 17, or Sensible Software, or RTS games, or FPS games, or whatever; but all these weird-looking Japanese platform games, or strange, unfamiliar RPGs? No idea. In fact, I remember learning what “Metroidvania” meant about five years ago, and literally saying out loud, “oh, so it’s like Flashback, then,” because I’d never played a (2D) Metroid or Castlevania game. Turns out they meant games that were, using the old Amiga Action terminology, “Arcade Adventures”. Now it makes sense.

Despite all this, I did actually play a fair few Sega games, as my cousins had a Mega Drive. So I’d get to have a bash at a fair few of them after school or whatever. This meant that, for a while, I was actually more of a Sega fan than a Nintendo one, a situation that’s broadly flipped since Sega stopped making hardware and Nintendo continued its gaming dominance. What all of this means, when strung together, is that I have a good deal of affection for some of the classics of Sega’s 16-bit heyday, but I don’t have the breadth or depth of knowledge you’d see from someone who, well, actually owned a console before the original Xbox. Yeah, sure, there are lots of games I liked back then; and probably quite a few that I still have warm nostalgic feelings for, even if they’re maybe not actually very good (Altered Beast, for instance, which I’m reliably informed was – to coin a very early-nineties phrase – “pants”, despite my being fond of it at the time). Therefore this list is probably going to be quite eccentric when compared to other “Best of Sega” lists. Especially because in the last couple of decades Sega has become a publisher for a number of development studios all around the world, giving support and distribution to the makers of diverse (and historically non-console) franchises as Total War and Football Manager. These might not be the fast-moving blue sky games one associates with Sega, but as far as I’m concerned they’re a vital part of the company’s history as it moved away from its hardware failures (and the increasingly lacklustre Sonic franchise) and into new waters. And just as important, of course, are their arcade releases, back in the days when people actually went to arcades (you know, I have multi-format games magazines at my parents’ house that are so old they actually review arcade games. Yes, I know!).

So, happy birthday, Sonic, you big blue bugger, you. Sorry your company pooed itself on the home console front. Sorry a lot of your games over the past twenty years have been a bit disappointing. But in a funny way you helped define the nineties, something that I personally don’t feel Mario quite did. And your film is better than his, too.

Crazy Taxi (Arcade, 1999): a simple concept – drive customers to their destination in the time limit – combined with a beautiful, sunny, blue skied rendition of San Francisco, giving you a gorgeous cityscape (back when driving round an open city was a new thrill), filled with hills to bounce over and traffic to dodge. A real looker twenty years ago, but its stylised, simple graphics haven’t really dated, feeling fittingly retro rather than old-fashioned or clunky. One of those games that’s fiendishly difficult to master, but its central hook is so compelling you keep coming back for more.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive, 1992): games have rarely felt faster, and even if the original Sonic’s opening stages are more iconic, overall I prefer the sequel. Sonic himself was one of those very-nineties characters who focused on a gentle, child-friendly form of “attitude”, and it bursts off the screen, his frown and impatient foot-tapping really selling it. the gameplay is sublime, the graphics still really pop, and the more complex stages contrast nicely with the pastoral opening. Plus it gave us Tails, the game industry’s own Jar Jar Binks, who I’ll always love because my cousin made me play as him all the time.

Medieval II: Total War (PC, 2006): I’ll be honest with you, this game is really the number one, I just feel weird listing “Best Sega Games” and then putting a fifteen-year-old PC strategy game at the top of the pile. But what can I say? I like turn-based PC strategy games, especially ones that let you go deep on genealogy and inter-familial relationships in medieval Europe. everyone knows the real-time 3D battles are cool – they made a whole TV show about them – but for me it’s the slow conquering of Europe that’s the highlight. Marrying off princesses, assassinating rivals, even going on ethically-dubious religious crusades… I just love it. I’ve not played many of the subsequent games in the franchise, but to be honest I like this setting so much I really just want them to make a third Medieval game.

Sega Rally Championship (Arcade, 1994): what, four games in and we’re back to racing? Well, Sega make good racing games I guess. And Sega Rally is just a really good racing game. Another one of those that was a graphical marvel on its release, it has a loose and freewheeling sense of fun and accessibility. Plus it was one of those games that revelled in its open blue skies, from an era when racing games in the arcades loved to dazzle you with spectacle – like when a helicopter swoops low over the tracks. I had a demo of this on PC, too, and I used to race that one course over and over again.

After Burner (Arcade, 1987): there are a lot of arcade games in this list, but when they’re as cool as After Burner, what can you do? This was a technological masterpiece back in the day: a huge cockpit that enveloped you as you sat in the pilot’s seat, joystick in hand. The whole rig moved as you flew the plane, and the graphics (gorgeous for their time) wowed you with their speed and the way the horizon shifted. I was, of course, utterly crap at it, and I seem to remember it was more expensive than most games, so my dad hated me going on it. But it was the kind of thrilling experience that seems harder to replicate nowadays.

Virtua Cop (Arcade, 1994): I used to love lightgun games in the nineties. This despite being utterly, ridiculously crap at them. I can’t aim; ask anyone. But they felt really cool and futuristic, and also you could wave a big gun around like you were RoboCop or something. Virtua Cop added to the fun with its cool 3D graphics. Whilst I’d argue Time Crisis was better, with a little paddle that let you take cover, Cop again leveraged those bright Sega colours to give us a beautiful primary-coloured depiction of excessive ultra-violence and mass death.

Two Point Hospital (PC, 2018): back once again to the point-and-clickers, with another PC game only nominally Sega. But I can’t ignore it. Taking what was best about Theme Hospital and updating it for the 21st Century, TPH is a darkly funny but enjoyably deep management sim, with cute chunky graphics and an easy-to-use interface (Daughter #1 is very fond of it). The console adaptations are good, too. I’d love to see where Two Point go next. Maybe to a theme park…?

Jet Set Radio Future (Xbox, 2002): I never had a Dreamcast. But I remember seeing the original Jet Set Radio – maybe on TV, maybe running on a demo pod in Toys ‘R’ Us or something – and being blown away. It was the first time I’d ever seen cel shading, and it was a revelation; just a beautiful technique that I didn’t think was possible, that made the game look like a living cartoon. Finally being able to play the sequel on my new Xbox was terrific, because the gameplay was excellent too: a fast-paced game of chaining together jumps and glides, in a city that was popping with colour and bursting with energy. Felt like playing a game made entirely of Skittles and Red Bull.

The Typing of the Dead (PC, 2000): The House of the Dead games were descendants of Virtua Cop’s lightgun blasting, but with zombies. Yeah, cool; I liked playing them at the arcades down at Teesside Park, in the Hollywood Bowl or the Showcase cinema. But playing this PC adaptation of the quirky typing-based spin-off was something else. A game where you defeat zombies by correctly typing “cow” or “bottle” or whatever as quickly as possible? A game that was simultaneously an educational typing instructor and also a zombie murder simulator? The fact that the characters are wearing Ghostbusters-style backpacks made of Dreamcast consoles and keyboards is just a seriously crazy detail, and the way the typing was integrated into the gameplay – harder enemies had longer words, for instance – was very well done. A bonkers mini-masterpiece.

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 (Switch, 2019): the very fact that erstwhile cultural enemies Mario and Sonic would ever share a game at all is the stuff of addled mid-nineties fever dreams; like Downey’s Tony Stark sharing the screen with Bale’s Batman (or Affleck’s Batman, who the hell cares at this point). The main thing is, it’s still crazy to think about it, even if it’s just entirely ordinary for my kids, sitting their unaware of the Great Console Wars of the 1990s. Anyway, divorced of all that pan-universal gladhanding, the games are good fun, adapting the various Olympic sports with charm, making them easy-to-understand party games, often with motion control for the benefit of the youngs and the olds. I don’t remember playing earlier games extensively, but the soft-RPG trappings of the latest iteration are enjoyable, especially the retro-themed events and graphics. Earns a spot in my Top Ten for its historic nature, but it’s also thoroughly enjoyable in its own right.

Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if all those crazy internet rumours were actually true, and Microsoft did announce it was buying Sega this E3? This really would feel like a very timely and in some ways prescient list.

[fridge-reviews]

Mini Games 4

The criteria for this is very simple, all of these games can be completed in three hours or under (without using exploits etc).  The reason for this? Well I find that sometimes, often in fact, that people just don't have time to play a longer game. So I thought I'd show some of the shorter ones some love!

Shelter

Developer: Might and Delight Publisher: Might and Delight Rrp: £6.99 (Steam), £7.59 (Gog.com) and £7.68 (Humblebundle) Released: 29th August 2013 I always wondered what it was like to be a badger. I know that sounds like a weird thing to think about but it's just been something that has always dwelt in my brain. Shelter gave me a look into their world.

It has to be said its a very stylised game aesthetically speaking, the whole game has a design that makes it look somewhat like it was created from cardboard. The music was also very well chosen playing what I would describe as light percussive jazz as your badger sett explore.

Looking after your cubs can be quite difficult, I always found I was desperately searching for the next meal and when that wasn't on my mind keeping them safe from predators became my main concern. Honestly this game is so worth a look into!

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Typoman: Revised

Developer: Brainseed Factory Publisher: Brainseed Factory Rrp: £7.99 (Steam) Released: 15th August 2016 This is a platformer where you play as the literally word 'hero', like most platformers you work your way from left to right without dying too much. What makes this interesting is the word play, as in you literally play with words. Turn noxious gas into a life saving gasp by adding a p, or stop a trap going off by adding an s and it'll be a strap instead.

Here's the thing for me, even though I did enjoy the storyline I honestly had way more fun with the two mini-games that come with it, one of which is a word hunt where you get sixty seconds to find as many words as you can. The other is a bit more complex, in this one you are given a target word to spell and a series of letters. However those letters aren't enough to spell the word you've been asked for. So you have to spell other words and use a mechanic that you learned in the storyline to turn that word into another word that is associated with it. You then take what letters you need to make the initial target word. I know it sounds complex but after a few tries you start to get into the swing of it.

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Tracks – The Train Set Game

Developer: Whoop Group Publisher: Excalibur Games Rrp: £14.99 (Steam) Released: 28th September 2017 (Early Access) Have you ever played a game that's just... nice? Something pleasant and relaxing to play? No real stake going on, no missions, just do what you want? That’s this game. I have to say I bloody love this game, it brings me to back to a time in my life I never knew I missed. Playing with Early Learning Center style wooden trains. You get to lay out the track (with nothing telling you you're about to run out of resources since there are none) and you never run out of track. It can be a ludicrous as you want it to be, just so long as you train doesn't collide with furniture. 

It has to be said that this isn't just a track laying simulation game, there’s also a part where you can pick up passengers and actually act like a functioning toy train. Even ride in it. But I'll be honest here, I didn't care for that bit. I just wanted to keep building tracks and watching the train go from in the drivers seat.

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Nex Machina

Developer: Housemarque Publisher: Housemarque Rrp: £14.99 (Steam) Released: 20th June 2017

I'm not good at bullet hell games, generally I try to avoid them because they just get me angry and stressed out, I just can't reach that 'zen' state that some people do with them. However I did find myself enjoying the game quite a lot. Like all the games on this list its very short but it also has a lot of replayablity. Even though I finished the main campaign I found myself returning to this game over and over just to see if I could lower my completion time.

Its definitely not an ugly game, although its not like you'll get much time to actually spend looking at the scenery and models. Its also got a real love for neon pink, which I'm kinda’ into.

My only real gripe with this game is the cost, I find the price of £14.99 for this game to be a bit too high, not for how long it lasts and what it provides. 

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Small Radios Big Televisions

Developer: Fire Face Corporation Publisher: Adult Swim Games Rrp: £8.99 (Steam) Released: 8th November 2016

A game published by Adult Swim and its a bit strange? I think the shock may just kill me. All joking aside though, games that Adult Swim has its hand in have a tendency to be rather odd, in a good way. They're one of the few publishers where I find that pretty much everything they put out appeals to me in some way.

So what is this weird game? Well for all intents and purposes, I suppose its easiest to call it a point and click adventure. That is what you do for the most part, solve puzzles in the environment by find the right objects to use. Also you have to corrupt cassette tapes to find gems to open doors... did I mention this game was weird? I enjoyed it though, I can say that.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Cells at Work! 13 (FINAL) | Double Decker! 2 | Slime Datta Ken 1 | Run with the Wind 1 | Bakumatsu 1 | Zombieland Saga 1 | DakaIchi 1 | Radiant 1 | SSSS.Gridman 1

Warning for discussion of 18+, potentially triggery things within the DakaIchi discussion...and the nature of that show being a yaoi will tell you whether you want to read that discussion in the first place. (There are full stops and lines around it in case you want to dodge that particular part, since Radiant comes right after it.)

...Otherwise, have at it.

Cells at Work! 13 (FINAL)

Apparently “distal” just means your extremities…

For some reason, I already knew about the fact that you can die from losing one third of your blood…because I read a Tumblr post that was meant to be for action writers and it was about blood loss.

…Huh? Was this a blood transfusion? That would explain why these new RBCs are so clueless about our RBC. Update: Yup, guessed it.

Come to think of it, there’s a WBC Nendoroid and a Platelet one but no RBC. That’s a bit disappointing…

The WBCs using that wobbly stick thing in the background are amusing, eheh.

Anyways, that was fun, even if I did get used to the routine of RBC getting lost and WBC fighting antigens in the end. See you next time!

Double Decker! 2

We’re now properly in the fall season, and of course now that the first drop’s out of the way, we’re starting with the best show this season (at least for the moment).

So does that mean if we’re NEETs we’re not paying for these detectives…? Is this an incentive for people to pay their taxes (LOL)…? (Okay, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Sheesh.)

DD Partners…? Sounds…uh, partnery, considering what DD stands for.

Why is Travis blinking so much when he’s apologising…?

Snarky narrator is fun. I thought it was Kirill during ep 1 (or at least, it was for a bit), but now this narrator’s talking too much in 3rd person for it to be true. Maybe…it’s future Kirill. *collective facepalms from the peanut gallery* Or maybe it’s Kirill and a narrator, and Kirill will then break the 4th wall somewhere.

Now that’s monkeying around…LOL. *gets pelted by tomatoes* Oh c’mon, can’t I get in a decent joke around here?!

Well, as much as the can thing Doug does to Kirill is tropey for anime, I gotta admit this ain’t monkey busin-eh? You want me to stop with the jokes? Aw. Fine then, I’ll stop…

There’s something utterly relatable about having gone down the path of your dreams, only for it not to work out. In fact, I think I’m going down that path right now and I need to decide where to head next. That’s why I’m watching this episode right now – to make sure I don’t regret my future, by focussing on the present with a good anime.

According to this link to Google Books I got when I googled “ignis” and “desperatio” together, this might have something to do with a Panegyric of the Saints…something to do with hell, worms, fire and despair…? Uh, wuh? Am I just investigating this the wrong way?

Sanctus Bridge? As in “sanctuary”? Wow, that’s…ironic.

The rabbit police mascot…you can see it on Deana’s dashboard, LOL. Plus the bird police mascot that goes with it.

The name shots you get of these criminals aren’t nearly as good as “dick suck” (sic) in Kekkai Sensen, but they’re pretty close. Plus they actually do have correct Japanese translations, unlike “dick suck” (LOL).

Seriously, what’s up with Doug’s head prodding? Is it to stop him from trichotillomania (which is the pulling out of hair)? I can see it getting vaguely annoying when the excitement of a new season wears off…

The CGI is kind of awkward in this. You’d need to stare at it for a bit to realise it’s CGI and it’s not the worst effort I’ve seen (*grumbles* Tsukigakirei *grumble*) but it’s still pretty bad…

Oh! Those doors! Is Doug’s car…a DeLorean? (dramatic piano SFX in background)

Was it just me, or did Kirill’s face go funny for a second as he was moping about how he didn’t get to do anything…?

“Let me be your Double Decker!” – That’s what he says as a double decker bus goes by…clever wordplay, huh?

“One is poverty. The other is class.” – Okay, my studies tell me that’s pretty much impossible. Even in social situations, you have a clear leader and subordinates. Poverty is fine and dandy in regards to giving the boot – heck, that’s why things like the Millenium Development Goals exist (or rather, existed in that case, since those were replaced in 2015) – but class? That’s a bit of a difficult one, unless you want to resort to hardline socialist methods, Marxist methods…or communist ones. Not that any of those are bad, it’s just that I happen to like capitalism,even with its flaws and no matter what imbalances it causes to others. It’s just that not having capitalism would mean everyone’s equal, but then everyone’s worse off as a result…because if everyone has the same stuff, no one is different and no one is diverse enough to make anyone special. Get what I mean?

I think this episode sold me even more on the show, the premise…the everything. Except maybe that “I want to get rid of class” part.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime 1

I just memorise this show as “Slime Datta Ken”, so if you’re wondering what that is…now you know.

What was that opening segment for, man…? This is just a boring isekai intro.

I’m laughing! He values his computer over his life? As much as I know I’m attached to my computer, you should prioritise 1) getting Mikami an ambulance, 2) stopping the blood flow or 3) just getting Mikami to preserve his own life. Not that I’ve ever been in a life or death scenario, but that’s common sense, even if it’s a bit nihilistic or unrealistic.

Seriously, there’s currently no pull but how intriguing these unexplained “acquisition” scenes are. Like seriously. Those effects are cool and somewhat intriguing in the same way as Juuni Taisen was.

The picture of a flower…where did it come from? A child? Hmm, interesting way to express such a though process.

The CGI of the reveal was actually really good. Like, Houseki no Kuni good!

Actually, this is very Houseki no Kuni. Reestablishing what it is that makes humans human and what causes a creature to live and all that.

I never knew a slime could be this expressive…

“I see you have guts.” – That’s probably something you shouldn’t say to a slime, LOL.

Oh! This reminds me of a writing piece I had to do one time where you had to tell a tale from a monster’s perspective and make them sympathetic. I wrote about a dragon, so there’s something nostalgic about this.

There really isn’t a lot of movement in this show. Not that I mind it – Juuni Taisen I used to love a bunch and that was based off a novel, but this is an LN-based show…the level of writing in this show is clearly from the LN camp, for one thing. How it got such great production values, however, is another question entirely…

The slime and dragon friendship that just formed made me wanna go “ET!”, just because the gesture they did to seal said friendship did kind of look like that, haha.

Mechasoft Doors MX…hey, I am getting my fix of anime OSs this season after all! Just…not in Gridman yet. Update: There are zero OSs in Gridman, not in episode 1 at least...

Oh wow! That fight scene was so darned cool! It makes me wanna see more already! And the fact he (I already know from promo material the slime’s name is Rimuru) uses his slime form and human form interchangeably…that’s even cooler!

The font down the bottom and up the top of the next episode box appears to say “Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken” (due to the frequency of one of the symbols that appears to be an S, then you do the same for E and you realise it works…then you realise the text is just stylised romaji). There are zeroes and ones on the left and right sides, which might correlate to Rimuru’s “analysis voice”…whatever that may be. Anyways, I’m pretty confident this’ll be something for my lineup, but it’s too early for judgement calls. It’s a keeper…for now.

Run with the Wind 1

Now here’s a show I didn’t expect to follow going in…I picked it up merely on ANN recs.

I’m laughing like a maniac! As much as it was a compelling opening, after the dude arrives on his bike and asks “Do you like running?” to a thief, I lost it. For some reason, I find it almost so unrealistic it became hilarious, in a stupid sort of way. Or maybe I just have a really bad sense of humour. Who knows?

That one guy running in the back in the OP is basically me every time I’m meant to do something physical. Even going up three floors via stairs gets me out of breath though and I live a fairly sedentary lifestyle, so I ain’t a good comparison.

That nickname “Shindo” puzzles me. I can’t think of a kanji combo that would result in wordplay with the characters for “god” and “child” using the name “Takashi Sugiyama”, but I guess maybe we’ll find out in a later episode…?

Thank…uh, goodness for the censorship on Musa…

Musa speaks unusually politely (because I noticed he used “gozonji desu” at one point, which is a keigo variant for “shitteiru”). Maybe it’s because they barely know each other that there’s keigo being flung about. That seems reasonable, at least.

There’s something authentic about this sense of camaraderie. I can tell because my extended family is huge, so gatherings are often like this but multiplied in scale.

“Tsuru no Yu” – Technically that translates to “Crane’s Bath”…”Public Bath” is the place’s purpose.

I was wondering why we’d somehow reverted to not having 10 dudes, but then they show this is actually Haiji’s perspective of the event from the start of the episode and show the scar on his knee. That’s gotta be important for later.

…and Haiji left his towel, LOL.

I still laugh every time I see Haiji’s stupid face (the one he makes when he asks “Do you like running?”).

I’ve associated the slurring of words like “yakusoku-ssu” to be for smol bishies like Yumoto, so having Haiji use it is a bit of whiplash. Then again, apparently that slurring is only used by men to assert their masculinity as far as I know…so, uh, yeah.

Actually…I’ve been wondering. How long are courses at this uni? Where I am, being a straight literature major is 3 years (assuming you also do other stuff that fulfils a straight Arts degree). Also, Fune wo Amu (by the same creator) is about a dude making a dictionary…hmm, so the creator really likes books.

Wait, as far as my short term memory operates, most of these guys at Chikuseisou do arts majors, aside from the law student and the smoker (who does engineering). They do literature or sociology, mostly. So if that’s correct…the author also likes sociology. I’ve been thinking about doing some sociology myself, it would really complement what I know about international studies.

As explained by Kyra, chiku – sei – sou. The sei means blue/green and the chiku means bamboo. Switching the two and reading them differently gives you “Aotake”.

Rent’s $300? Must be cheap, eh?

Also see Kyra’s post for information about the food-based suicide note.

The Kanto Gogakuren refers to this manga, Sakigake!! Otokojuku. It’s basically Again!!, but with more Fist of the North Star-style dudes.

Hmm…turns out you can refer to this show as KazeTsuyo. That’s going to make me confuse it with SekaTsuyo, though…(SekaTsuyo = Wanna Be the Strongest in the World!) Also, it turns out the character for “Kakeru” in this case means “to run” (normally it means “to dash” with a kanji normally used for flying). Wait…did I ever mention how much this show’s aesthetic visuals always look as if they’re a Powerpoint theme (see images below)? They do look like that, don’t they?

I still have no idea why Kakeru has a bad case of resting b**** face, but…uh yeah, forget I said that. The sound direction in this show’s really nice. It really takes advantage of quiet moment to insert natural sounds.

I think if you go “yes!” when Haiji says “I’m going to win over all the dudes”, then you’re sold on the show. I did go “yes”, just without speaking. You know those feelings you only get in your gut and heart? Yeah, like that.

Huh? I noticed a dude called Bruce Chiou is in the credits and he’s definitely on RErideD this season too…

Out of this one, Slime Datta Ken and Double Decker it’s ranked last, but this show’s still a pretty strong addition to the seasonal lineup. Only time will tell if I kick it out or not…

Bakumatsu 1

The only experience I have with this era in anime is Bakumatsu Rock, I think…and that means I don’t know much about it.

Actually…considering the OP, scratch that. I know a bunch because of Touken Ranbu and other similar historical shows.

A…boob window? On a man? I get the black skintight vest is meant to be sexy, but I can’t see the point of that diamond…it’s just something extra for the animators and the illustrators to deal with.

C’mon. Can we not have Dudes Swishing Their Swords at the 4th Wall as something meant to hype up the audience? It’s a cliché, almost as bad as the running scenes you often get in OPs and EDs…Seriously, I can’t believe I’m getting mad at 10 dudes swinging their swords like this (specifically I’m getting mad because they were all in succession – doesn’t matter if it was in time to the music or not).

Okay, who transplanted WWI into this? I know that’s the point of the show, but the sepia really sold the idea of “this is meant to be Old-Timey Wimey Stuff and whoever’s meant to be watching is meant to be a history buff so they can spot the difference”.

Part of the ep title is “Mou Ichido no Bakumatsu”, so a better translation is “The Bakumatsu (Era) – Again!”

Wait, I thought Kondo was meant to look hotter than this (especially because he had what appears to be a coin – or an old-timey family crest – on his head). The frumpy mouth doesn’t sell the goods, yo.

Somehow…I knew Katsura would have glasses. He has them in Bakumatsu Rock. But is it historically accurate to have glasses in the Bakumatsu era, though?

Come to think of it…something that controls time would be pretty hard to destroy, no?

I think I read on ANN that swords being too big to draw in ship quarters is accurate. Hmm.

If this is such an important treasure…then why not have more padlocks on it? Or more guards closer to it (although those guys probably ran away)? Or some other protection around it? Couldn’t this supposed Yoshinobu-sama fight for himself?...Then again, I think this is just a case of overthinking. (insert MST3K mantra here)

Puh-lease. As much as I want a kunoichi (lady ninja) in my shows, don’t make them Naruto run. That’s one of my pet peeves…

Uh…Hagi? That’s probably it, considering there’s a river in the show.

Kakesoba.

Kamaboko.

Tanuki soba.

Well, there’s something to be said about being able to steal Shinsengumi jackets while the men are eating noodles. At least it didn’t involve knocking them out though (weak LOL).

Okay…why do the Shinsengumi look like waiters now? As much as I like a dude in a waiter suit, if I wanted a waiter, I’d go to a fancy French restaurant…

I feel like I’m being clubbed over the head with themes in this show. C’mon, have more tact than that.

There’s basically no chemistry between these guys (Katsura and Shinsaku). How did they meet?

Wait, so Darker Blue is Sakamoto if Green is Katsura and Red is Shinsaku? Sakamoto (Ryouma) is the redhead in Bakumatsu Rock, isn’t he? Okay then. But who’s White?

Seriously, Shinsaku. Learn from the kunoichi and stay quiet and stealthy. I don’t need another shonen hero…

Oh man, Toshizou is normally one of the Shinsengumi I like best (or at least I recognise his name more) out of these kinds of shows. If he has Perma-Scowl, I can’t possibly like this version.

Oh goodness. Souji’s a friggin’ sadist. Come to think of it though, I think this (Okita) Souji looks like the one from Gintama.

Why does Toshizou sound a frigton like any given Touken Ranbu sword…?

If that katana is symbolic…Toshizou must be hecka masculine, LEL. (Note: A “LEL” is not quite a LOL, it’s mostly done in jest. If anything, it’s probably about half a LOL.)

If that blonde ain’t Abe no Seimei, Yoshinobu-sama or some other important historical figure I know the name of, I’m eating my hat! (Not that I’m wearing one, it’s a figure of speech.)

I like Sakamoto’s face here, but man, I get distracted by the man candy below it…(i.e. his abs and bare chest, LOL. What did you think I was referring to?)

Oh great. (sarcastic) Sanada Yukimura almost always has that silly helmet, ever since Sengoku Musou I’ve pretty much tried to run away from it. I’d recognise it anywhere.

Who had the grand idea of letting Sanada keep his horse, anyway?

Okay, as much as I like making snarky comments, I made one too many here, methinks. Time for the drop pile.

Zombieland Saga 1

I read spoilers just a little bit, so I know the main twist is “zombie idols that sing death metal” already. If you didn’t want to know that at this point…sorry.

Whoa! They killed their protag off the bat? Not that I didn’t know that wouldn’t happen (already knew it would), but that’s gutsy. Truck-kun, go back to your darn isekai shows already.

Okay, I know this is a schoolgirl, but can we not with Sakura’s Schoolgirl Run for Dainty Ladies? This is a zombie show, dangit. Run properly. Can we also not with the boob jiggle?

Well, that’s one way to defeat a police officer (or get yourself arrested): Spade to the Brain.

Otsumami appears to be the name for the squid in Kotaro’s pocket.

You can’t see Kotaro’s eyes, even behind those sunnies…hmm…

Wow. Miyano sounds like he’s having such fun voicing Kotaro, y’know?

From the flyer: “They are coming soon from the underground...” Yup, that’s right, alright. Zombies have already come from the underground.

Tae’s credited under ????. They’re still holding out on us!

It seems like a pretty good keeper, provided you can keep up with who’s who.

.

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DakaIchi 1

Yep, the BL anime. Thought I’d never try one? Think again.

As much as I do think I’d want to be hugged by Takato, his face…makes him look like he came out of Junjou Romantica…? Uhh…awkward.

Please don’t let this be a work full of sadism and BDSM. I’m not that kinky, y’know…?

Uh, if you ever knew “boundaries”, Azumaya, that would be great. Thanks.

LOL, what a way to win a dude over. $10! That is cheap for a star.

I’m still wondering if this all constitutes “assault” or some other illegal business. I mean, Takato agreed to everything under the influence of a bunch of drinks.

LOL, the director’s shirt says “concentration”. As in, “focus on the stuff you’re doing”.

Hey wait, how does anyone pull off a kabedon on an operation curtain?!

Uh…maybe it’s just my inexperience with the genre, but…what the heck was that scene with the feathers?

Dangit, Yaoi Hands. If I weren’t so aware of you already, you wouldn’t be breaking the immersion of this show!!!

Random Dance Ending? I so did not expect that, I’m laughing as a result.

Uhh…I cannot believe I did that. I watched an episode of a yaoi anime and coveredit without it ruining my pride! To think I watched 18+ shoujo ai before 18+ shonen ai is really something I cannot get my head around, though…not that I will ever tell you which shoujo ai show I watched. So…uh, it was actually pretty decent aside from the “I don’t get what the heck this scene is meant to be” bits which are probably staples of the genre.

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Radiant 1

Uhh…why do I feel like I’m watching Deltora Quest for the 3rd time? Not that Deltora Quest is bad, it’s just too stereotypically high fantasy.

Mahoutsukai. Literally “mage”, but could be “wizard” or “sorcerer” if you went with it loosely. Then again, the French word for sorcerer must be pretty close to the English one which should be enough of a guide for translators, right?

Eh? It’s an…elephant –cow? What is this, Avatar  the Last Airbender? (half-snarking)

I think as the show goes along, its comedic timing is actually getting…better. That’s something, huh?

The show’s just a tiny bit too heavy-handed with its themes of racism or whatever sorcerers stand for. Then again, this is a shonen show. It’s allowed to be this way.

Geez, stylised English really is the order of the day for anime these days, huh? Lessee here…Alma’s…uh, Observatory, I think it says…?

Uh…all this talk about grimoires is giving me bad flashbacks…bad, screamy flashbacks involving a certain Asta…

I just noticed Alma gets referred to that way by Seth. Are these two not related, even though they share the same house (?) and hair colour?

Oh great. (sarcastic) Toilet humour. One of my worst enemies, aside from fanservice…

What’s up with the bat (?)? It knd of seems to be Alma’s…

Hey, I…think I know this kind of story too well. It’s going to eventually end, after a long run, with an adult Seth and that girl from one of the key visuals together…or something. Shonen are weird like that. They always end with a happily ever after and an adult protagonist, or the “the adventure just keeps happening!” sort of thing…y’know?

The plural of Nemesis is “Nemeses”, but it seems the book Seth read said “Nemesis’ Egg”. So the plural is the same as the singular in this case.

Huh? They chose to put both fancily-written French and then Japanese under it, as a homage to the French origins of this work? Huh, interesting.

Tommy’s saying “Gyaaaaah!” not “Yaaaaaaah!” - there’s a difference between those two, y’know?

SSSS.Gridman 1

As a self-professed fan of heroes who never actually got into tokusatsu because I keep missing Power Rangers when it airs on local TV stations, this and Garo are filling in a genre space I never really had until I started wandering tokusatsu wikis...which was before the live-action Power Rangers came out, methinks.

Why do I feel like I’ve seen this font (the one “SSSS.Gridman” is written in)? I thought it was a Calvin Harris music video, since I have a few downloaded legally (due to a CD I found in one particular library), but Harris’s font is slightly different to this one…Well, after some experimentation, it seems to be Arial with extra kerning.

“Amnesiac” is starting to become an anime trope in itself…

Seven-Two-One, LOL.

Ahh, children in puberty. Can’t tell whether relationships are romantic or just platonic. (wistful)

If Utsumi isn’t the goth dude from earlier, I’m eating my hat! (Not that I’m wearing one right-oh, I’ve used this joke before, haven’t I?)

…dangit, now I have to eat my metaphorical hat. By the by, I thought Utsumi was an Ume sort of character (as in, the type who would usually get voiced by Yuichiro Umehara), but no, it was Soma Saito.

The girl with the purple hair reminds me of the Administrator (or whatever her name is, the AI) from Yakusoku no Nanayamatsuri.

Regardless of whether the scene was with volume or not, that awkward pause between Shinjo, Utsumi and Hibiki went just a weeny bit too long…

When Takarada approached Utsumi and Hibiki, the colours of her earphones and eyes really popped!

They seem to treat memory loss as something minor, like a cold. It’s a bit awkward, I think.

Utsumi, kid. If you think computers from the 70s and 80s are huge, you should see server rooms! Those computers are huge! Not to mention, the first computers filled up entire rooms (just like servers do). Even portable server units are about a good 160 cm tall with wheels…oh, you don’t want to hear me prattle on about this? Okay, moving on.

“This really is a pile of junk, huh?” I had to go back and check someone hadn’t skipped a word – they did skip the word, in fact.

T-This is what Trigger have held out on us for? A monster like this looks terrible in CGI, man. Even if it is one of the better efforts. I mean, the eyes don’t even look in the same direction…

Why does Utsumi refer to the computer as “Junk”?

The Ultra series? Y’mean Ultraman?

Let’s just say…Gridman looks much better than the kaiju here.

They didn’t even dispose of the kaiju head properly, LOL.

I feel like the battle didn’t quite get my blood boiling. (Probably because I was grumbling too hard at the kaiju and the parts where the execution got a little too silly.) I’ll put it on hold and see if it gets better in a few episodes, but I’m not holding my breath. Since this is Trigger, it could pull off some great stuff if it tried…it’s just this seemed a little soulless in comparison to everything else I’ve seen them do. Or maybe my increased consumption of anime this year has left me jaded...

[elizabd-illustration]

Molly Fairhurst- Practice in Progress

Molly is a full time freelance illustrator and I found it very hard to choose which pictures to include of Mollys work because I think her working method is so clear because her work is so fun to look at.

Her ethos boils down to something simple, she loves drawing, its an investigation of the world like a diary or therapy a way to use her hands. For her the quality of a drawing is so much in the process, the destination is enjoyable but the process is what’s really important. Even if the drawing is different from how she imagined, it reminds her of the fun she had creating it.

The aim is to have fun and to make something that is sincere and genuine, and its valuable to find working methods and processes and subject matter that gets you to do that. Digital drawing doesn’t fulfil those elements for Fairhurst, its a valuable tool for filling in colour and being fast but its missing that fun hands-on element. Physical media is much more unpredictable and you get surprises when you use them such as using ink, charcoal and oil pastel, chopping up paper and collage, being clumsy.

Keen user of sketchbooks, she doesn’t like things to ever be perfect but cherishes the private creative space that a sketchbook gives you. Many artists and students feel pressure to make the sketchbook really neat which can be really damaging, you wont find our anything new if you don’t explore and take risks. You can be yourself and investigate your own visual vocabulary. Try not to look to other artists for that, personal practice revolves around sitting at her desk having fun without intention and having a laugh, drawing and making daft things. You won’t ever be fully evolved so don’t freak out about it. When at uni she was a massive over thinker but realised there’s not enough time to have existential worries when working. Editorial illustration is good because you have to work fast as Molly found working for the New York times. I appreciate how her art isn’t really polished in the editorial and other areas. Looser stylisation. Fairhurts doesn’t feel the need to follow genre expectations, the comic strips are loose notes with illustrations next to them, they’re a soppy self indulgence. Thinking on the go.

[mrmallardsmobileposts]

2 Fast 2 Furious and the nature of sequels

Preface: I'll be calling the movie Fast 2 because 2 Fast is stupid. Also, I've covered spoilers with strike marks, like so, and the movies I spoil are Smokey and the Bandit II and Mission Impossible 2. The MI2 spoilers are miniscule, but the Smokey II spoilers are substantial - but for the record, that movie sucks ass and imo you're probably better off not seeing it. Regardless, consider this a spoiler warning for those movies.

To sum up my opinion of 2 Fast 2 Furious - while it's emblematic of the nature of forced sequels, in good and bad aspects, I would say that ultimately it is one of the better examples of a shoehorned sequel that I've ever seen.

I saw The Fast and the Furious 1 last week, and while I thought it was corny and dated - the f-slur gets used twice, there's a mesh tank top on a dude considered to be the height of badassitude, the dialogue is pretty dumb and the acting isn't great - I was very entertained. I've seen Fast Five, so I know how corny and over the top the series gets, and I'm approaching this series from an emotional standpoint - are the characters compelling, is the action good, how much am I invested in the stakes. The first movie was pretty good - I felt like it was kind of reserved, even, though that's because the budget was low and because I have unrealistic standards due to my knowledge of the franchise as a whole.

So going into Fast 2, I knew to keep my expectations level. It's a sequel that lacks a major star of the first one, it's set in an entirely new environment with an entirely new supporting cast, it's dripping in excess since the first movie did so well, and all of this is going to affect the story's plot in a way that will significantly deviate from what fans liked about the first movie.

But for a movie with those elements, Fast 2 actually managed to keep the essence of what makes this franchise so enjoyable. It's still fast - though the CGI and other car effects have aged like milk - there's still a focus on community and "family" in a way - Brian reconnects with Roman, he's made connections with Ludacris' character and he gets in good with the wider racing community in Miami - and while the villain is cartoonishly evil and the last act of the movie is basically a giant cartoon with the s***ty villain and the stunts, the series as a whole has steered towards crazy cartoony s*** ever since. And also, you can see the stupid cartoony s*** in the first movie - using grapple guns to hijack trucks, for example.

Of course, two of those are retroactive connections to the franchise. That last one applies to the franchise going forward, as it became a franchise zombie. So it's totally understandable that for its day, Fast 2 was controversial. I still maintain that for a sequel that could be characterised as an unneeded cash-grab and potential reboot, Fast 2 has actually aged pretty decently.

There are two unnecessary sequels I want to compare Fast 2 to - Smokey and the Bandit II, and Mission Impossible II.

Smokey and the Bandit II is bloated and full of itself. The first movie was a straightforward caper movie - bootleg a truck full of Coors across state lines and evade the police. There's a little bit of backstory and character development, but it's a lean, functional movie at the end of the day.

Yet despite sharing the exact same cast as the last movie, sans one additional character, the characters feel outlandish and full of themselves - which reflects in the entire product. The Bandit has drunk himself into a pit over Frog, so Cledus has to give him a pep talk and push him through a training montage to lose his beer weight - it's padding, and it's trying to build a greater emotional arc based on a character who feels more like an archetype who works well in the moment. There's an unnecessary target shooting scene with Buford T. Justice that feels like padding, the Dom DeLuise character is grating, and the cargo of a baby elephant - along with its accompanying ethical dilemma, seeing Bandit take a more altruistic, heroic position rather than being the lovable scoundrel of the first movie - is such a self-serving cop-out. And that finale of all those truck drivers coming to the rescue - while awesome in concept - comes in after a majority of the movie has been a stinking turd and is the biggest example of unnecessary excess and bloat in the entire movie.

Smokey and the Bandit II took itself so seriously that it lost sight of what made the first movie so good. The Bandit has a heart of gold, but the movie doesn't have to give him an ethical dilemma to make him an objectively decent person. While the idea of the team losing the bet in the end is an alright ending, they didn't need a moral victory on the level of preventing an elephant from a life of circus work/misery to paint them in such a good light. And worst of all, the caper sucks. It's so up its own ass that it doesn't know how to emulate the first movie's appeal at all.

Quick note: I spoilered plot details, but I genuinely think this movie is one of the biggest pieces of dogs*** I've ever seen and you're really not missing out on much by not seeing it. People seem to hate the third one, but even that was a fun watch compared to the second one imo. If you're never gonna watch Smokey and the Bandit II, by all means, disregard the spoiler tags.

Then you have Mission Impossible II, which I saw for the first time less than a month ago. And while the first movie was a goofy, self-indulgent romp, the second movie is filled to the brim with unnecessary excess, bloat and unearned emotional weight. It feels longer than it actually is, the cinematography is all style and no substance, the acting is grating and full of itself, the acting sucks and it feels so dated and out of place on almost every level.

Like Smokey and the Bandit II, it feels much longer than it really is. Sequences like Tom Cruise flirting with the main girl for the first half hour of the movie really make the movie drag, especially after the punchy and functional approach to the first movie. It's overly convoluted, even for Mission Impossible - at one point the bad guy basically nails Tom Cruise's plan down to the T, and the heist focuses more on his deduction than it does on the heist itself. Then the last act, with the main girl being infected with the supervirus, has some of the most self-indulgent and needlessly stylised action in the series to date, and it jams the forced love story into the forefront even more. Mission Impossible II is a rough watch, even today - it's a wanky mess.

What these movies share is that they're entirely detached from the movies that came before them in tone, plot and/or stakes. Smokey II has a dogs*** tone, the plot is needlessly padded and the stakes suck. MI2 has an over-stylized and melodramatic tone, the plot is poorly acted despite having the building blocks of a decent MI plot, and the stakes are kinda f***ed due to the forced romance being directly connected to the mega-threat of the movie. Smokey II bastardises previously established characters, while MI2 brings in a mostly new cast to ruin specifically for that movie - though the variable team has stuck around in the franchise at large.

Here's what Fast 2 does to stand out.

The plot - another caper involving the feds, with a new character and locale in place of a returning one. The stakes are less personal than the first movie, but they're bigger and they're supplemented by Brian and Roman reconnecting over the course of the movie. Brian and Roman's relationship reflects the values established in the first movie - community, or family if that's your bag. Ride or die.

The tone - gratuitous driving, gaudy colours, a bit more ambitious with the bad guy compared to the first movie - true to the first movie, and reflective of the later sequels. Arguably less actiony in some aspects. A bit sillier than the first movie.

The stakes - Brian and Roman's freedom, the safety of Brian's love interest and eliminating a violent criminal. More dramatic than the first movie - that movie was character-driven from beginning to end, while Fast 2 is more of a standard action movie with an unambiguous villain - but reminiscent of the first movie's values.

Smokey and the Bandit II extended a great movie past the point it needed to exist, and MI2 was a stumbling point in a widely celebrated action franchise that no-one likes to bring up. Fast 2 - while undoubtedly dated, corny and a deviation from the first movie's focus - reiterates values that the first movie shared, and which became more prominent as the series continued. It also, bizarrely, aligns with the crazy action s*** that later movies spiral into - just on a lower scale. In comparison to the first movie, the wilder, dumber action is a departure, but it's almost restrained in comparison to what the franchise becomes.

Roman isn't the best character for most of the movie - he might be my second least favorite next to the Miami cop - but I found his relationship arc with Brian over the course of the movie to be pretty solid, and it paid off near the end in a really great, personal way. And while it's not the same as Brian and Dom, it is still a strong "friends to enemies to friends" arc in the end. Complement that with some gratuitous racing action, and you have the basic formula for a good Fast and Furious movie.

And the thing about Fast 2 is that it reminds me directly of Smokey II and MI2. Near the end, there's a scene where the good guys intervene with the bad guys with a bunch of cars to help the good guys escape - the whole cavalry idea reminded me a lot of the ending of Smokey and the Bandit II, with the fleet of trucks that face off with the police force. And much like MI2, the main character has a fling with a woman on the inside of the villain's lair, and endeavours to save her life near the end of the movie. The former felt bloated in Smokey II after an absolute s***pile of a movie, while it appealed to the series' sense of style and whimsy in Fast 2. The latter felt shoehorned in MI2, with the character basically being a damsel and macguffin with entirely too much screentime dedicated to getting together with Tom Cruise, while the character in Fast 2 is a character who is intriguing and who feels essential, whose functions as a character aren't overshadowed by Paul Walker's massive boner for her.

Ultimately, the Fast and the Furious franchise is a flashy, speedy spectacle franchise. The worst thing you could do is botching the driving and making it feel slow and inessential. Ultimately, while Fast 2 isn't as good as the first one - and may or may not still go down as the worst movie in the franchise - it still feels like a Fast and Furious movie. And it's retroactively made better by basically being The Incredible Hulk to Fast Five's Avengers - the Fast and Furious movies are basically a cinematic universe unto themselves, and even the bad ones gain some entertainment points by factoring into the wider narrative. By the sheer nature of the Fast and Furious movies being pandering schlock at the end of the day, Fast 2 really isn't that bad. It feels congruent with the past and future of the franchise, even if it isn't necessarily as entertaining as the rest of the franchise. Other unnecessary cash-grab sequels gut the characters, skimp on their development and make stories that really don't need to exist - Fast 2 has main characters who gel well with each other (even if one of them kinda sucks), gives them a solid arc that plays into the wider theme of the franchise and introduces characters and plot elements which further movies build on.

Fast 2 is not a bad sequel. It's not amazing, and it might still be the worst movie in the franchise for all I know, but my genuine opinion is that as far as sequels go, it does hold up in several key aspects that make it an entertaining spectacle on par with the broader franchise. As far as unnecessary cash-grab sequels go, this is actually a pretty good one.

[alexanderwrites]

Thoughts Roundup - Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 14

 “We Are Like the Dreamer”

David Lynch famously said that he can’t stand people talking after they see a movie. That the movie is the talking. Despite the fact that talking about movies is pretty much my passion, I get what he means. Up until recently, i’d be scouring the internet for hours after each new episode, reading about every talking point, every theory and attempting to unpick every moment. I would do this immediately after watching each episode which, really, makes no sense. Yes, I still like to read reviews and give the forums a quick peruse, but I find that to get the most out of the show, I have to sit with the episode for a while, and see how I feel about it after a good night’s sleep, hence why I write these reviews a day after I see each episode. There is such a thing as too much and too soon, and reading pieces immediately after watching an episode is sort of like seeing the opening act after you see the main show. There is so much to take in and enjoy with each given episode that afterwards I just need to process it in my own way without getting external input.

Talking and writing about the show does have merit and is great fun, I just am starting to realise that I need to separate the show from the writing about the show. I mean, how can it not mess with your expectations, for better or for worse? “We WILL see X character next episode”, “The next episode will be the ONE where everything changes”, “This character from this episode will be the key to the whole mystery”, and so on. How would I feel about The Return if i’d never read a word on it? Part of me wishes I had, but then again good, thoughtful writing about The Return is so complimentary to my enjoyment of the show, and has made me appreciate so much more about it. I suppose my point is: writing, whether good or bad, has affected the way I watch and view the show, and so for the reviews henceforward, I will try and keep my points as individual and unaffected by other writing as possible. Ideally, i’d like what I say about the show to express how I feel, rather than attempt to sway the readers (all 2 of you) a certain way. So, after a good night’s sleep, little to no reading on the episode and a big, fuck-off coffee, let’s talk about...

. The FBI. The episode kicks off and wastes no time in getting straight into things. It’s with openings like these - abrupt and un-establishing - that remind you that this is from one long, 18-hour Script. The endings often remind me of this fact too. Absent are cliff-hangers and buttons, and absent are ‘previously on’s at the beginning of each episode. Instead, here’s Gordon, calling Lucy. It’s strange to think that they haven’t interacted in The Return yet, and even stranger to remember that Gordon hasn’t even been back in town. It’s strange, because they’re two of the funniest characters in the show, and Gordon is one of the most Twin Peaks-y characters, despite not even being from the town. They feel linked, even if it’s by one event 25 years ago, and they are still linked today - they just don’t quite know how, yet. Gordon’s call to Lucy is laugh out loud funny; I have a simple comedy brain, and will always laugh at things that are too loud. Hearing Gordon’s tinny yell pummel its way out the end of her receiver really tickled me, as did his unexplained, confused pause when Lucy told him of her trip to Bora Bora. Not a beach boy, Gordon? So, for a scene that wastes no time, it certainly wastes time, but beautifully so. Their interaction is a miniature reunion that finally links Gordon back to Twin Peaks, which has always felt like his spiritual home.

The Return has had a really interesting way of dispensing information, wherein waiting for a character to discover something that we already know is as gripping as us discovering information in the first place. And so, Gordon finally finds out about Laura Palmer’s missing pages, and how it indicates “Two Coopers”. You have to admire Robert Forster’s straight-face matter-of-factness in handling these topics. He knows it sounds strange, but to him, these are just strange truths that it is his duty to notify his colleagues and superiors of. I guess, as a Bookhouse Boy, Frank Truman has seen enough odd things in those woods to not be particularly fazed by them anymore. 

. Tammy, God Bless you for saying “What’s the significance of the Blue Rose?” when asked by Albert which one question she should ask him about the first ever Blue Rose case. That is what we all want to know, and the last few episodes have given us more clarification of that than I ever expected. She could be seen as an audience surrogate, the newbie to whom everything is explained. But she is also smart, more proactive than the typical rookie, and she gives us the most perfect explanation of what a Blue Rose is: something which does not occur in nature. It’s exciting getting to hear glimpses into the history of the Blue Rose, but a bigger bombshell is dropped in this scene, one so inextricably connected to Dougie and Vegas that it’ll most likely have our FBI crew strolling down the strip by the next episode: Diane is Janey-E’s half sister. But, is she really? Whomever she is texting (which it seems is Doppelcoop), she tells them where the FBI are and that she’s getting them to Vegas. If this were her task, to get the FBI to Vegas, would it not be beneficial to her to speed up the process by claiming that she’s Janey-E’s sister? Who knows. Diane plays her cards very close to her chest, emotionally and informationally, and any time we get too close, we get a big fat Fuck You from her. For now, i’ll take her word for it, because I love the idea that Laura Dern and Naomi Watts are sisters. 

. Monica Belluci has the secrets to the universe, or at least in Gordon’s head. “Who is the dreamer?”. It’s a damn good question, and I think what it means is “whose chess board are they all pawns on?”. Is it Doppelcoop, or is it forces larger than him? Is it “Mother”, or something we saw born in the atomic explosion? The show has always felt like a dream, and while I don’t believe it’ll all turn out to be a literal dream, the feeling is there, and it makes us wonder what version of reality we are seeing. It’s a thoughtful philosophical quandary, and one that clearly disturbs poor old Gordon, the sensitive soul. And next we have our Bowie cameo which is not really a cameo like the clickbait headlines tell us, but a scene from Fire Walk With Me, which, at this point, you almost have to have seen to fully appreciate The Return. It’s interesting that both Gordon and Albert hadn’t remembered exactly what Jeffries had said, and his “Who do you think that is there?” question regarding Cooper is certainly creepy in retrospect. Did Jeffries slip in and out of time, and see who Cooper would become? It feels like he is, if not a key to unlocking the mystery, at least a very important figure in the overall story. I don’t think there is a clear mystery that will ever be solved at this stage, and I think in a sense, it would be disappointing if there was one overall answer to everything. It would be too easy. Instead, lets just take each scene and surprise we get, try and contextualise them as best we can, and figure out what they say rather than what they literally mean. It’s too vague and too abstract for everything to be neatly explained, and really, wouldn’t that ruin some of the fun?

. The boy scouts Bookhouse Boys are heading to Jackrabbit’s palace, and there is something intrinsically melancholy about their journey, because it makes Bobby fondly recall his father. The woods they walk through aren’t the scary, foreboding woods we see in Twin Peaks at night, they’re glowing with sunlight and the home of happier times in Bobby’s childhood. That is, until they find a vortex to the Black and White World and the woman from the Purple World who helped Cooper escape back in Part 3, naked and unable to speak, and with skin still over her eyes. The scene of them exploring gave me serious Lost flashbacks, and like Lost, what comes next is confusing as all hell, yet fairly answerable.........I think. Andy, of all people, disappears to the Black and White Room, which looks absolutely stunning again. The set design throughout The Return has been terrific but perhaps a bit more modern and less stylised than some of Lynch’s other projects, but the Black and White room is a hit of that old school, Eraserhead style set design. The Giant names himself as the “Fireman”, which ties again to fire and electricity being a source of evil, and the Fireman as a pretty decent bloke, really. A window above Andy transforms into a cinema screen which gives him the weirdest “Previously on” the world has ever seen. From the Atomic Blast and the releasing of Bob into our world, to Laura Palmer being taken by the Angels, it is a stirring and haunting mirror into the darkness that summarises succinctly the nature of good and bad in the show’s universe. And now Andy - yes, Andy - has the secret to it all. It’s a hypnotic scene, and i’m increasingly blown away by how well The Return is blending the more abstract, with the linear narrative, to the point where the two cannot exist without each other. Like a blend of a wanderlust through the netherworld, and a real-world sense of purpose and duty, Andy takes the woman to the police station to protect her. He knows more now, and understands that she is in danger. From who? Mother, it seems, is still hot on her tail. His job has never been more important, and keeping her safe was as important as arresting the policeman earlier, a funny scene, the buildup to which seems to have played out almost entirely offscreen. I like it though - it reminds you there’s an entire world going on that you don’t necessarily get to see. The woman chirps and squeaks in her cell, desperately trying to articulate some sort of message. We cannot decipher her message, no matter how hard she tries to speak. So close, yet so far away.

. James has his first non-singing dialogue of the season, and though he doesn’t give too many glimpses into his life, we know that it’s his birthday, and that he’s a security guard at the Great Northern. And that above all, he seems happy. It’s hard to tell from what we see of him, but he smiles so much more easily than he used to, and his brooding seems absent. We’re not really thinking about ol’ forehead, because we’re thinking about his Security Guard buddy, a ‘cockney’ (that accent is maybe the scariest thing in the return yet) who has lots of lines to tell you that he is, in fact, English (Pubs? Check! Football? Check! Antiquated cockney rhyming slang? Check!). It’s weird and a bit goofy, but damn is it a story that hooks you. I love the idea that there are portals to the Other Places all over the world (the book hints that there are many), including in an alley in the East End of London. Does that mean Ian Beale is to discover one next? It’s such an incongruous image but kind of brilliant, and now we have someone sent specifically to Twin Peaks by The Fireman and given one very powerful hand. Arms and hands, man. The references to arms and hands being signs of power, possession, weakness and evil are so numerous, but they seem to be perhaps an entry point for non-human spirits? Then, James goes to check out a creepy noise (never a good idea you dumdum) in the basement of the Great Northern, where that odd ringing noise seems to emit from. It feels like he could die down there; it feels like he is dead down there. It feels like hell, and there’s more excellent set and sound design to thank for that. There is something very bad under every building in Twin Peaks...

. In an episode that has so many talking points to choose from, I think the one that most people will be talking about is Sarah Palmer’s. Her scene is so filled with dread, malice, then satisfyingly gruesome terror that I needed to pause the episode afterwards. It’s an horrific yet celebratory moment: the disgusting harasser gets exactly what we’ve been waiting for the whole series, and gives a sense of power and authority right back in the hands of a tortured woman. Yet, it is pretty clear cut evidence that Sarah is either not a person, or is a person who is, for want of a better word, darksided. Was she the girl who got a bug in the mouth after all? Is she home to spirits as Leland was? It’s hard to tell, but i’m all for the spirits if they cause her to bite a gross dude’s throats out. When Laura took her face...off at the beginning of the Return, there was nothing but light. When her mother did the same, a darkness peered out, as did a cheshire cat grin that takes a pretty high place on the Nightmare Imagery Shitlist of The Return. 

. And we come to an end, with more ambiguous discussions at the Roadhouse. Billy gets a mention, and it is likely that he was the blood soaked creep from the jail cell scene earlier in the episode. “I can’t remember whether my uncle was there”, says one of the characters as she describes when she last saw Billy. She seems worried by this. It’s such a small and seemingly unimportant question, but it feels like the detail that makes her story not of this world. Having characters in more than one place at a time and having characters disappear and reappear has made us look out for any variation on this theme, and the Uncle’s both being there and not being there stands out. The talk of family members reminds me of the screaming car woman with the sick teenager from episodes back, who also listed members of her family, seemingly at random. What is going on in the families of this town? It feels so fucking nightmarish, and while I once didn’t enjoy these moments for their lack of direct connection to the narrative, I now appreciate them as miniature dramas, always unfolding under a shade of darkness, and expanding the universe of the show that you don’t really see. Tonight’s scene ties their drama to Audrey’s through the mention of Tina. How it’ll come together is to be seen, but the word I think most apt to describe it is Purgatory. It feels like these characters are stuck in a strange, haunted, endlessly unfolding narrative. Of abusive family members, of violence, lies and deceit, of nightmarish uncertainty and endless repetition. What would be really interesting would be to piece all these moments together to see what themes and motifs stand out, because like so much else, it feels like there is something pounding at us from beneath its surface.

That’s how I’d describe this episode. There is something underneath this episode, like the face beneath Sarah’s, or the language beneath the Blind Woman’s chirps, or the ringing sound underneath the Great Northern, that we get glimpses at but ultimately cannot decipher. They are brought out by fear, anger, necessity and desperation, and try as we all might, we may not discover what they all mean. Maybe it’s that we listen to the blind woman’s noises, that we venture into the basement, that we look into Sarah Palmer’s eyes, that is important. Perhaps the act of Andy listening to the fireman and watching those scenes unfold is what the purpose is. What matters most is not that the mystery is answered, but that we behold the mystery, and celebrate it. Isn’t that what all of life really is? One big, weird ass mystery that we’re endlessly trying to answer? We can watch the magician’s hands as closely as we like, but his hat will end up empty, and we’ll be left asking questions and wishing we’d just enjoyed the trick. Maybe we’re all in someone else’s dream, or maybe we are the dreamer - what matters most is that the question exists, and that we accept it. What more can you do than that? “What the fuck is going on in Twin Peaks”? We might never know, and that’s okay. 

[duncanbarker-blog]

Every time we visit Singapore, a trip to Universal Studios Singapore is the one thing we always try to do. I’ve been to this fun theme park on Sentosa Island four times now—with Erin as a couple, with my brother, and even with my whole family (aged from their 20s to 60s).

Top tip: We always buy discounted tickets to Universal Studios Singapore online at Voyagin for a saving of at least 10% off the usual price. Click here for current prices.

I love theme parks. I love eating ice cream to a dramatic film score soundtrack. I love walking through carefully constructed, exquisitely detailed scenes, imagining the hard work that a team of immensely creative people put in to make me feel like I’m in a 1920s-era, hyper-stylised New York.

New York Wharf at Universal Studios Singapore (photo by Kevin Fairbairn)

And, of course, I love the rides. While it’s not a huge park, there are some fantastic rides at Universal Studios Singapore that I’m happy to ride again and again.

Universal Studios is easily accessible from the centre and well worth a day trip. The small size can be a relief in Singapore’s heat as you can do all the main attractions by mid-afternoon and then retreat to your hotel pool.

In this post we share the best Universal Studios Singapore rides and attractions for older kids and adults like us, who steadfastly refuse to grow up. We also give tips on how to avoid queues, how to get there, the best place to buy tickets, where to eat, and much more to make the most of your day.

Me and my brother in front of the castle at Far, Far Away

Top Universal Studios Singapore Rides and Attractions

1) Battlestar Galactica: Human vs Cylon

Battlestar Galactica is two rides in one and is not to be missed if you enjoy rollercoasters. We usually start our day here when queues are short. 

This duelling coaster features a blue inverted coaster representing the Cylons and the seated red coaster representing the Humans. If you don’t like going upside down, stick with Humans.

The Cylon coaster is my favourite ride at Universal Singapore—it has multiple inversions including a cool loop that takes you below ground level through a thick mist.

The Human coaster has no inversions, instead delivering its not-insignificant excitement through speed, quick stomach-lurching drops, and tight turns. It’s still a lot of fun and both are worth riding. 

Both coasters require you to put all of your stuff in a nearby locker (and I mean everything), which is free for the first 45 minutes. And when they say require, they are serious—staff members stand at the head of the line and are armed with hand-held metal detectors to detect wallets and phones that you may not have put away.

Transformers is the most popular ride after park opening, so we usually head straight to Battlestar—on our latest visit both coasters only had a 5-minute wait. 

2) Transformers: The Ride

Transformers is a 3D ride where you don glasses and sit in a cart that flings you around in time to the action on the screens, and it is incredibly effective.

Zooming down city streets chased by giant fighting robots is as dramatic and exciting as it sounds. The ride gets you as close to being in the movie (assuming you’d want to be in a Transformers movie) as you’re ever likely to get.

Unfortunately, if you are prone to motion sickness, then this one is very likely to set it off. For everyone else, it’s an incredibly thrilling next-generation ride.

This is the park’s busiest ride in the morning, so we usually wait until mid-afternoon to ride it. A 120-minute wait at 11 am can turn into a 10-minute wait at 3 pm. 

3) Revenge of the Mummy

In a similar vein to Transformers but without the 3D glasses, on Revenge of the Mummy you set off in your jeep through an ancient Egyptian tomb in search of The Book of the Living. You travel through various scenes (with some fun surprises) before being thrown onto a surprisingly intense roller coaster in the dark.

I always forget what a fantastic ride Revenge of the Mummy is—it’s a fun mix of roller coaster, haunted house, and multimedia adventure. The queues aren’t usually long in the morning (we only waited five minutes and rode it twice), but it’s best to make it your second stop after Battlestar Galactica as they do increase in the afternoon. 

This one also requires lockers (again, free for the first 45 minutes), but they’re not as strict as for Battlestar. 

Ancient Egypt area (photo by Kevin Fairbairn)

4) Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure

A river rafting adventure through the world of Jurassic Park, this one is a guaranteed soaking and includes an impressive waterfall drop and plenty of splashing river rapids.

Lockers are available nearby and they’re not free for any amount of time (unlike Ancient Egypt and Battlestar), but unless you bring a dry bag for your valuables, you’ll want to use them.

If you find yourself uncomfortably drenched afterwards, there are drying pods available to blow dry you for S$5.

It’s best to wear quick drying clothes when you visit Universal (especially given Singapore’s often rainy climate) so you can dry off quickly after this ride. Our companions who wore denim shorts were uncomfortable for quite a while. 

5) Waterworld

The Waterworld stunt show is set in a specially constructed theatre and is an absolute delight.

The performers are fully committed to their roles, providing slapstick entertainment before the show begins and breathtaking stunts throughout. Multiple three storey drops, jet ski chases, explosions, and dramatic fights on narrow catwalks are thrilling to behold.

There are usually a few shows in the afternoon and it’s definitely worth scheduling in one of them. Pick up a map with show times as you enter through the ticket gates. 

6) Shrek 4-D Adventure

With my family outside the Shrek 4-D ride which takes place inside the Far Far Away Castle

The Shrek 4-D Adventure show plays continuously throughout the day and the queues aren’t usually long. 

In the 4-D theatre, you join Princess Fiona, Shrek and Donkey on a honeymoon adventure that picks up where the Shrek movie left off. You wear 3-D glasses and are immersed in the adventure as your seat bumps and bounces along with the action and you feel air blasts and water spray. 

If you are pregnant or have back issues, you can ask the staff for a non-moving seat. 

Note that the pre-show and show are quite long, so allow about 30 minutes if you are trying to fit it in before Waterworld as we did. 

7) If You Have More Time

Here are some other Universal Studios Singapore rides and shows that are worth doing if you have extra time: 

Lights, Camera, Action – Steven Spielberg hosts this movie special effects show where an empty soundstage is transformed by a hurricane about to hit New York City. 

Street Performers – While you are strolling the park take the time to stop and watch some of the street entertainers. New York has the most options including break dancers, tap dancers, and pop-rock music.

Canopy Flyer – A gentle aerial ride with great views over Jurassic Park. The queue is usually long for this and it didn’t seem worth the wait. 

Puss in Boots Giant Journey – A suspended family rollercoaster atop a giant beanstalk with anti-gravity sensations. For adults looking for thrill rides, it’s probably not worth the often long queues but if the wait is short, try it. 

Enchanted Airways – Another gentle family rollercoaster that gets busy. 

Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chase – A cute indoor kids ride that’s worth a go if you need a break from the sun and the queue is short. 

Parade and Fireworks – These only happen on certain days (usually Fridays and Saturdays) so check the park map when you arrive. 

Note: There is no Harry Potter World at Universal Singapore—for that you’ll need to visit Universal Studios Japan in Osaka or Universal in Orlando or Hollywood in the USA. 

Minion! (Photo by Kevin Fairbairn)

Universal Studios Singapore Ticket Prices

One day Universal Studios Singapore tickets cost S$79 (US$58 / £45) for adults, S$59 (US$43 / £34) for 4–12-year-olds, and S$41 (US$30/ £23) for seniors aged over 60. 

How to get discount tickets

We highly recommend buying your e-ticket in advance from Voyagin to save 5 to 20% on the standard ticket price and avoid the queues. We always do this and it’s a very easy process—you print your tickets at a self-service machine just outside the gates by scanning the code you receive by email. Get your discounted tickets from Voyagin here.

Tickets if you are over 60

If you are over 60, it’s cheaper to buy your ticket direct from Universal either by queuing on the day or by getting an e-ticket in advance from the Resort World Sentosa website. You don’t need to print these etickets—just scan the code on your phone when you go through the gates. 

Express passes

Express passes are available to give you access to the priority express queues and are worth considering on weekends and holidays. These cost an extra fee in addition to your entrance ticket.

Express passes are priced dynamically depending on the date and start at S$40 (US$29 / £23) for one use per ride or S$70 (US$52 / £40) for unlimited uses per ride. You can’t use an express pass on Canopy Flyer but you can on most other rides mentioned here. 

Universal Studios Singapore Opening Hours

Universal Studios Singapore opens at 10 am and closing times vary from 6 pm to 10 pm. Check the Universal calendar. Fridays and Saturdays have the latest openings but are the busiest. 

I recommend arriving at least 20 minutes before opening time for the best chance of getting on the popular rides quickly. They sometimes open the park gates five minutes before the official opening.  

How to Avoid Long Queues at Universal Singapore

We hate queueing and never wait more than 15-20 minutes for a ride, even though ride wait times can get up to two hours or more at Universal Singapore. Use these tips to avoid long queues:

Visit on a weekday

Friday and Saturday are peak days at Universal (I’d also avoid Sundays) so try to visit from Monday to Thursday. Also avoid any national holidays. 

Arrive early

Make sure you arrive before the park officially opens. If you are one of the first in the park, you should be able to ride multiple popular rides without queuing more than 5-10 minutes. 

Ride the most popular attractions first (except Transformers)

This is the order of rides we did on our last visit and we avoided any long waits: 

Battlestar Galactica Human

Battlestar Galactica Cylon

Revenge of the Mummy x 2

Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure

Lunch break

Shrek 4-D

Waterworld

Transformers – Only a 5 minute wait at 2.30pm while everything else was much longer by then.

If you can’t do that, buy an express pass

Express passes allow you to skip the queues so it’s worth considering if you have to visit on a peak day or can’t arrive early. See the ticket price section above for more details. We’ve never needed one by following the rules above.

How to Get to Universal Studios Singapore

By MRT and monorail

Singapore is easy to get around by public transport and Universal is no exception. The efficient MRT goes to HarbourFront Station, and from there you can get the Sentosa Express monorail to Waterfront station, which is a short walk from the park.

The monorail is a little more expensive than standard MRT rides (S$5 return), but you can use your MRT card to get straight on. 

By MRT and cable car

To enjoy the view, you can take the cable car to Sentosa Island—follow the signs in the HarbourFront MRT Station, take the cable car to Imbiah station, then take the Sentosa Express monorail one stop to Waterfront station. Voyagin offers discounts on Universal + Cable Car packages. 

By MRT and on foot

Alternatively, you can walk the 25 minutes across to Sentosa Island but given how hot and humid Singapore is, you might find yourself wishing you’d paid the S$5.

By taxi

If you are in a group, it might work out easier and almost as cheap to take a taxi. On our last visit, we paid about S$20 using the Grab taxi app from the Orchard area (with morning surge pricing) and about S$15 back taking a taxi from the basement of the parking lot of the casino just outside the park. 

See the RW Sentosa website for more transport details. 

Hotels Near Universal Studios Singapore

Sentosa Island is the nearest place to stay—Hotel Michael, Festive Hotel, Hard Rock Hotel, and Crockfords Tower are all highly rated hotels within easy walking distance of Universal. The bonus of staying nearby is being able to take a break during the hottest part of the day, but hotels here aren’t cheap.

If you are on a budget, stay in Chinatown and take the MRT to Universal (it should take about 30 minutes). The Bohemian Chic is a well-reviewed, stylish hostel and Hotel Mono has attractive ensuite double rooms. 

If you want to combine a Universal trip with shopping, then stay in Orchard. We loved our stay at Treetops Executive Residences for the comfortable apartments (great for families) and beautiful pool. It’s about a 20-minute taxi ride from Universal or you can take the MRT. 

We recommend Booking.com for finding a hotel in Singapore. The prices are great, it’s easy to use, there are no hidden fees, and there’s often free cancellation. 

Airbnb is also a great way to find budget and luxury accommodation, either a private room or a whole apartment. Again, Chinatown has the cheapest options closest to Universal. Sign up here for $40 off your first booking. 

Food At Universal Singapore

Technically you are not allowed to bring food and drink into Universal but our bag was not searched. There are water fountains throughout the park so you can refill bottles.

There are plenty of food stands and restaurants in the park offering a mix of Asian and Western fast food. Vegetarian and halal options are available (and are marked on the park map) and there is a Starbucks in Hollywood. Here are a few options:

Loui’s NY Pizza Parlor in New York – Decent pizza slices (S$11), vegetarian pasta (S$14), and ice cream sundaes. 

Discovery Food Court in The Lost World – Singaporean classics like satay and chicken rice. For vegetarians there’s a vegetarian noodle soup (S$13) that’s nothing special but it’s healthier than the usual fast food. They also have potato wedges. 

Oasis Spice Cafe – We wished we’d seen this Indian place before we ate because the vegetarian biryani with two curries (S$15) sounded good. 

The following eateries are also marked as having vegetarian options: Marty’s Casa del Wild Food Court, Friar’s, StarBot Cafe and KT’s Grill. 

Summary

Although it’s not the largest theme park, Universal Studios Singapore packs a lot in, and there is plenty to keep die-hard thrill-seekers occupied for a day.

All of the rides above can easily stand multiple visits, and wandering around wonderfully crafted themed worlds past bright and cheerful characters can’t help but bring out the joyful child in all but the most hard-hearted of cynics.

We also highly recommend Universal Studios Japan in Osaka—it’s much bigger than Universal Singapore and has different rides including the brilliant Harry Potter World and the scariest rollercoaster we’ve ever been on. 

If you enjoyed this post, pin it!

This post was originally published in January 2016 and was majorly updated in 2019 after our most recent visit. 

[lesbrarians]

Junkrat/Roadhog: Voyages Ch 9

This is a long one, about twice the length of a normal chapter, but I felt like it all had to be told in one chunk. Also I feel like I should probably give you some kind of warning about second hand embarrassment for the beginning part of this because Junkrat is a Trainwreck

Title: Voyages

Characters: Junkrat, Roadhog

Rating: R

Summary:  After a rocky start and some ups and downs, Junkrat and Roadhog are officially partners, even if things haven’t progressed quite as far as Junkrat would like. With his treasure at the heart of their grandiose plans, they take their adventures overseas and leave their mark on the world, for better or worse. (Mostly for worse. They’re criminals.) Sequel to “Origins.”

---

To say that Junkrat was horny was a gross understatement. Roadhog hadn’t cut off all physical contact with him after the mishap in Tokyo -- he was still perfectly happy to make out whenever Junkrat crawled on top of him and tugged insistently on his mask. But every time Junkrat’s hands wandered or he started grinding against him, Roadhog managed to find a way to wiggle out of the situation. Junkrat was getting tired of it. If Roadhog would just stay put…

He let himself fantasise about tying Roadhog up so he couldn’t slip away. He didn’t realise that he was chuckling softly to himself, or that the drool that pooled in his mouth was beginning to leak, until Roadhog addressed him.

“What’s so funny?”

“Well, it’s not funny, exactly... just thinkin’ about what I wanna do with you.”

“We have company, Junkrat. And you’re supposed to be working right now.”

Right. Company. He’d been all gungho and enthusiastic about their partner to begin with, but the novelty had worn off, and Jae-won’s presence was really putting a damper on his sex life. Granted, it was non-existent to begin with, but he had been working on remedying that. Still, he couldn’t even jerk off for stress relief in the meantime.

So he was grateful for a project to work on. Anything to stop thinking about Roadhog’s cock in his mouth and his hand at his throat. Roadhog’s tongue, hot and wet against his skin. Roadhog’s body pressed against his own, trapping Junkrat’s cock against his belly.

He shook his head, trying to push the thoughts away and focus on the EMP bomb he was constructing.

It wasn’t working. He considered going outside to get off right quick, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He wanted Roadhog.

He wanted Roadhog, and he didn’t want to wait anymore. He glanced over at Jae-won, who was absorbed in his own work, his face lit up by the ghastly blue light of his computer screen. Maybe if he just asked... for all his faults, Jae-won was a reasonable man. It couldn’t hurt, he figured.

Junkrat worried his lower lip with his teeth. He put down the copper wire he had been holding and approached Jae-won. “Hey, mind if I ask ya somethin’?” He leaned against the wall, hands shoved into his pockets and shoulders hunched up around his ears. “Won’t take but a moment.”

Jae-won barely glanced up from the screen. “What is it?”

“Ya don’t mind if I have a little fun with the ol’ Hog over there, do ya?” He nodded in the direction of where Roadhog was sitting across the room.

Jae-won shrugged. “Sure, as long as you don’t count on me getting involved. I have no interest in that sort of thing. And I’m busy anyway, I don’t have time to mess around with you.”

Junkrat’s shoulders dropped, and he blinked at Jae-won. “Okay...” he began slowly. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning on it in the first place, so.” He wet his lips. “Yer busy, roight?” he confirmed.

Jae-won finally looked up at him, clearly annoyed. “I just said that, yes. Go do whatever stunt you have planned and get it over with so you can get back to work.”

Well, that went better than expected. What a nice bloke, Junkrat thought. Maybe he had been too hasty in judging Jae-won.

He crossed the room to where Roadhog was working on their giant harpoon. “Put that down, I got somethin’ better for you to work on.” Junkrat plopped himself down on Roadhog’s lap and tugged the harpoon away, discarding it to the side.

“What--” Junkrat slapped a hand over the stitched line of Roadhog’s mouth. The action did nothing to physically keep him from talking, but the surprise of it made him shut his mouth regardless.

“Shut up,” Junkrat advised. He couldn’t help but giggle a little as he leaned in to kiss Roadhog’s collarbone -- he was too overjoyed that he finally had permission to act on his urges. He sucked on the side of Roadhog’s neck, his hips automatically rolling forward to get some of the friction he so desperately needed.

Roadhog pushed him away. “Inappropriate, Junkrat.” His head twitched over to look at Jae-won.

“No, no, it’s okay!” Junkrat insisted, pressing against the restraining hand on his chest. “I asked and everythin’!”

“Get off me.”

“Get off you, or get you off?” Junkrat snickered. Grinding the heel of his mechanical palm against his own crotch, he groped for the bulge in Roadhog’s pants.

“Get off me,” Roadhog repeated, a little louder this time.

Jae-won glanced up from his computer screen and jerked back. “What the fuck are you doing?” he said, aghast.

Roadhog pushed Junkrat off his lap onto his ass. He sat there, knees spread and one hand still on his dick, and looked between the two of them in abject confusion. “You said I could!” he protested. Nothing made sense to him anymore.

“I said no such thi-- what, the ‘have fun’ thing?” Jae-won spluttered. “I thought you meant ‘have fun with’ like... like playing a trick on him! Actual fun, not sexual fun! That never crossed my mind -- why would you even think to ask permission for that?”

Junkrat’s brows furrowed. “Because I want it, and ain’t it polite to ask before doin’ it?”

“You don’t do it, period!” Jae-won said. He pushed his glasses up onto his head and scrubbed his eyes. “You’re an animal. My dog can control himself more than you can, and he isn’t even fixed.”

Junkrat frowned. He wasn’t terribly civilised, but he didn’t think he was that bad.

“Look, I don’t care what you do when I’m not around,” Jae-won said, “but it should stay that way. Keep your dick in your pants.”

“It is in me pants -- And I mean, I can definitely keep clothes on if--”

“No,” Roadhog said, and Junkrat’s stomach plummeted. He never would have expected Roadhog to take Jae-won’s side over his.

“Okay,” he said, defeated. “I’ll just... be outside.” He snatched a can of spray paint from his pile of supplies before he made a break for it.

Once he escaped, Junkrat swore and kicked the metal trash bin by the door, causing it to fall over. He stared at it for a moment, then kicked it again, just to hear the satisfying clang. He plopped down on the ground and rubbed his hands over his face. At least the cold was killing his boner.

He was more infuriated than anything else. He didn’t understand, he just knew that he was incapable of telling when it was and wasn’t appropriate to make a move. “Should just wait for him to try and fuck me next time,” he grumbled to himself, then let out a disbelieving laugh as he dropped his hands. “Yeah, that’ll never fuckin’ happen.” He let out a slow exhale. Maybe he was being unfair. It wasn’t like Roadhog never kissed him first. Maybe the timing just never was right. He shook the can of spray paint and channeled his emotions into it, painting an enormous mushroom cloud topped with stylised letters that spelled “KABOOM!” His only relationship might have been imploding, but if everything went to shit, then at least he would have left his mark somewhere in this world.

He heard the door swing open beside him. Roadhog sat down next to him, back against the house’s siding. Junkrat studiously avoided looking at him.

“Nice,” Roadhog said after a moment, lifting a hand to gesture at Junkrat’s graffiti.

“Yeah, I think it’s real representative of my state of bein’ right now. A true work of art.”

Silence.

Roadhog exhaled, the sound rasping through his gas mask’s filters. “Come here,” he said, wrapping a heavy arm around Junkrat’s shoulders. “Sorry.”

In that moment, Junkrat wasn’t sure whether he loved Roadhog or hated him. He hated that he made him feel things so strongly, things that he’d never felt before, things that consumed him entirely. And yet, he loved every inch of him. Roadhog made him happy in a way that he had never experienced before, and he was helplessly, irrefutably attracted to him. He just wished he could act on those feelings to completion.

Junkrat reflexively curled against Roadhog’s side. “I just wanted to blow off some steam,” he said, unable to keep the whine out of his voice. “I feel like I’m goin’ crazy, ‘Hog.”

“‘Going’ crazy?” Junkrat elbowed Roadhog, who laughed, deep and wheezy. “I know. Just not when Jae-won’s there.”

Junkrat traced the outline of the pig face stitched to the front of Roadhog’s sweater. “So, after we ditch him, when all this is over?”

“After we ditch him,” Roadhog agreed. “So quit whinging and come inside, you’re gonna freeze out here.”

---

The night before Yongary’s predicted appearance was one of the tensest and most exciting nights of Junkrat’s life.

Much to his and Roadhog’s relief, Jae-won had insisted on spending the night at his own apartment so that he could shower and “get ready for his close-up.” Junkrat and Roadhog couldn’t have cared less about the notoriety they would gain from their stunt, but the renown of successfully hacking the colossal omnic was Jae-won’s driving force.

“I’ll be taking the hard drive with me,” he said, tapping its casing.

“Bloody hell you will!” Junkrat retorted. They needed Jae-won out of the picture so that they could modify his work and prevent Yongary from killing itself before it infected and brought about the demise of the lesser omnics in the area.

Jae-won fixed him with a look. “Yes, I will. I need collateral to ensure that you won’t slip off in the night and try to pull this off by yourself.”

“It’s not going anywhere,” Roadhog said.

He and Jae-won stared at each other, at an impasse. Roadhog took a step forward, and Jae-won shrunk back, physically intimidated by Roadhog’s towering height and muscle. He was the first to break eye contact (at least, so it appeared; Roadhog’s eyes weren’t visible behind the thick lenses of his gas mask). “Fine,” he said, more than a little put out. “But I’m taking the harpoon with me. Then we’re both dependent on each other.”

“Fair enough!”

“Fine.”

“Then we’re in agreement.”

The door shut behind Jae-won.

“What a fuckin’ tosser,” Junkrat proclaimed.

Roadhog grunted in assent. “Let’s get to work.”

Junkrat plugged in the hard drive and cracked every knuckle on his left hand before attempting to open it. A message flashed at him: “Restricted Access. Please input password to continue.”

He gaped at the screen. “He password protected it? This is our project, who the hell does he think he is?”

“He thinks we’re gonna mess with it,” Roadhog said. He sounded displeased, a sentiment Junkrat shared.

“I mean, he’s not wrong, but what’d we ever do to make him think that? He knows we want to do this. Even if it needs a little tweak to suit our purposes...”

“Maybe he does it for everything.”

“Paranoid little freak. How the heck are we gonna get past this, then?”

Roadhog rubbed the back of his neck. “Start guessing, I guess.”

After three failed attempts (Jae-won’s name followed by his age; the name of his dog, which Roadhog had asked about during Junkrat’s meltdown outside; a frustrated keyboard smash of random letters and numbers), a message popped up on the screen. “Warning: You have entered an incorrect password three times. After five unsuccessful attempts, your device data will be erased.”

“Oh, son of a--” Junkrat looked helplessly at Roadhog. “What now?” He was normally the one with all the ideas, but he felt woefully outclassed here.

Roadhog exhaled, a long, drawn-out breath of air. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Look up ways to get in?”

Junkrat growled in frustration. “You do that, then.” He messed around with the hard drive while Roadhog began researching. He was not terribly confident that they could learn how to bypass a password in one night, unless Roadhog found a program that could do it for them.

He didn’t want to wait that long. Not when they still had to edit the code after they managed to unlock it.

“To hell with this,” he finally said, unscrewing the cap off of his right hand’s index finger. “I’m goin’ in -- get me some of those cables over there. And the lappy.”

Roadhog froze while Junkrat started unscrewing the device’s case. “You sure about that?” he asked, choosing his words carefully.

“‘Course I’m sure!” Junkrat said. “Don’t ya trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’re ya worried about?” He popped the lid off to examine its contents. “The storage unit’s in there somewhere.” He pulled the laptop onto his lap and pecked the device’s identification number into the open search bar. When he found the online manual, he studied it carefully. “I think I got this,” he said. “Nah, I know I got this.”

Roadhog watched as he carefully extricated the hard drive’s storage and set it aside. Junkrat opened up the laptop to reveal its innards and used an empty SATA port to wire the storage component to the motherboard.

The hard drive contents, and their program, popped up on the screen. Junkrat grinned at Roadhog. “See? I told ya!”

“Never doubted you.”

“Liar! I know you were worryin’ over there. Y’d think ya would’ve learned by now. I’m a goddamned mastermind, mate!”

“Yeah, yeah. I should know better.” Roadhog nudged Junkrat with his shoulder.

If accessing the virus’s framework was the easy part, figuring out how to modify it was definitely the challenging part. They sifted through the code until, at long last, they found the segment that they believed encompassed the suicide command.

Pasting it into what they thought was the appropriate spot of the god program packet was an ugly, awkward process. There was no way to tell whether it would run properly, but to Junkrat’s untrained eye, it looked good enough.

“Y’know, if Kajura’s real,” Junkrat said, “and all that ‘a giant rainbow snake created Australia’ thing isn’t a load of crock... we should probably pray to it that this all works.” He cupped his hands around his mouth to shout at the ceiling.

“Oi, y’hear that, ya slithery bastard? Do us a solid, won’tcha? S’all in yer name, anyway!”

Roadhog laughed. “We need all the prayers we can get.”

Junkrat dropped his hands. “Or... or, failing that, just dumb luck. It’s gotten us through this far, hasn’t it?”

“Sure has.” Really, their luck was extraordinary, all things considered. Luck was what enabled them to survive the harsh irradiation of the Outback and the callous, dog-eat-dog society that had sprung up in its wake; primal instincts and their innate talents for mechanics, explosives, and brunt force could only help so much. Plenty of equally strong men had died under the same conditions. They were the lucky ones.

And, if all went as planned, luck would make them gods.

---

Junkrat’s sleep was dreamless but fitful, his subconscious restless for what the day before them held. They had crashed as soon as Junkrat reassembled the hard drive, exhausted from the whole ordeal and aware that they would be up at dawn. When the sun finally rose, they met up with Jae-won, who had acquired a boat for them to use. Junkrat and Roadhog didn’t ask how, nor did they particularly care. It was small, barely large enough to fit the three of them and their supplies, but it had a powerful motor that would get them to their target quickly. They reconvened on the private beach of an evacuated home near the harbour, relatively close to the site where Yongary routinely made its entrance. Junkrat spent the hours leading up to the attack in the sand, clinging obsessively to the device that held his god program.

“It’s almost time,” Jae-won finally said, glancing at his holo-watch. “We should get ready. Hand everything over, I’ll get us set up.” He climbed into the boat, reaching out expectantly for the harpoon, pulse bomb, and the hard drive.

Junkrat extracted his legs from the waist-deep pile of sand he had buried himself in. He and Roadhog ignored Jae-won’s outstretched hands and placed their belongings in themselves. It wasn’t likely that Jae-won would drop them, accidentally or otherwise, but they weren’t taking any chances.

Junkrat clambered on board behind Jae-won, who was tucking their devices away so that they were secure yet easily accessible. He snickered as he extended a hand to Roadhog, a parody of a prince offering his hand to help his princess down the steps.

Jae-won batted his hand away. “He can’t come with us,” he said.

“What?” Baffled, Junkrat looked up at Roadhog. “No, I need you!”

“There’s a weight limit. He’s too fat.”

Fury welled up in Junkrat like an inferno, burning hot and sudden. “Did you just call him fat, you little sonovabitch--” He tried to attack Jae-won, but Roadhog was quicker and grabbed the back of his sweater.

“Let me go!” Junkrat snapped, fighting against Roadhog’s grip. “He insulted yer honour!”

“My honour doesn’t need defending,” Roadhog said. “Calm down.”

Junkrat was silent for a moment, then said, “Okay, I’m good. Y’can let go now.”

The second he was released, he immediately lunged for Jae-won again and would have tackled him over the side of the boat had it not been for Roadhog’s sharp reflexes. “Breathe.”

Junkrat forced himself to take several deep breaths. Roadhog waited until the agitated rise and fall of his chest stabilised before letting go. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Junkrat inhaled and shook himself out.

“He’ll be fine back here,” Jae-won told him.

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be fine,” Junkrat parroted. All this reassurance was somehow making him feel less fine. He was wary about leaving Roadhog behind. At least he was going out there with a partner. Roadhog would be by himself on land, and while he knew Roadhog could protect himself just fine -- it was why Junkrat had hired him, after all -- he couldn’t shake the nasty feeling that something was going to happen with Roadhog on his lonesome.

There was a massive groan from behind them, and the earth shook beneath their feet. Junkrat grabbed Roadhog’s arm for stability, and they all watched as the colossal omnic’s crown emerged from the deep. For a moment, Junkrat forgot all about his hatred of omnics and just stood there, mouth gaping. Frozen in place, he watched as the omnic broke the surface. Water streamed down its massive, impermeable carapace as it looked around. It positively dwarfed the entire army that was awaiting it.

It was awe-inspiring.

“We have to go!” Jae-won shouted above the din; the Korean military had already opened fire, battering Yongary’s head as it rose from the water. The bullets ricocheted harmlessly off its metal skull. They only seemed to enrage Yongary, who emitted a deafening mechanical roar. In the distance, they could see the squadron of gamer-piloted mechs drafted by MEKA preparing for assault. If they were going to find an opening to make their move, it had to be now, while the initial assaulters fell back and regrouped and the mechs were yet to be deployed. Yongary took another earth-shattering step, exposing its shoulders as it slowly extricated itself from the confines of the ocean.

Junkrat shook himself from his trance. It was just another omnic. Just a tool to be used. “Just a sec!” he yelled back. He stepped on the side of the boat for a boost, causing it to rock dangerously, and grabbed Roadhog’s face so he could plant a kiss on the stitched line of his mouth. He sat back down, buzzing with adrenaline, and hoisted his pulse bomb onto his shoulder. “Junkrat, primed and ready. Let’s do this thing!”

Roadhog grabbed Junkrat’s arm before Jae-won could start the engine. “Hey,” he said, and Junkrat looked up at him. “Be safe.”

A warm, fuzzy feeling made Junkrat’s stomach flip. “You too, ya great big lug.” He reached up to pat Roadhog’s cheek.

“Are you done yet?” Jae-won asked with a nervous glance behind them. Yongary was still working its way out of the water.

“Oi! Mind yer own bizzo, we’re havin’ a moment here!” Junkrat said. “But yeah, yeah, fine.” Roadhog released him, and Junkrat turned around to face the omnic head-on. “Let the games begin!”

They took off, approaching Yongary from behind. It quite literally had eyes in the back of its head, an early modification after it had been assaulted from both sides. The military was concentrating its efforts on Yongary’s front this time, fully aware that it was useless to split their forces up and try to gain the element of surprise through a rear attack. Junkrat and Jae-won were banking on being a small enough target that the omnic’s secondary set of eyes wouldn’t notice them. With any luck, if it did spot them, it wouldn’t view them as a threat compared to the army in front of him.

The closer they got to the colossal omnic, the slower they moved, until the boat was at a mere crawl. “What’s the big holdup?” Junkrat said, impatiently tapping on Jae-won’s shoulder. The boat inched forward.

“It’s... a lot bigger up close.”

Junkrat snorted. “Yeah, it’s called perspective. What’d ya think was gonna happen?”

“I just didn’t realise it was going to be quite so big.”

“Y’watched those videos with us! Ya saw it, next to those buildings, ya dummy!”

“Well, it turns out seeing it on the TV screen is very different than seeing it in person. I can’t even see its head without bending backwards.” Jae-won wiped his palms on his pants, perspiring heavily in spite of the cold weather.

A tingling sense of foreboding prickled the back of Junkrat’s mind, a fight-or-flight instinct that warned him of imminent danger. “Okay, we’ve established that it’s big.” Junkrat spoke slowly. He had the sense that any sudden movements would spook Jae-won. “But we’re armed, remember? All ya gotta do is anchor the harpoon, and I’ll take care of the rest -- quickly, mind you.”

Jae-won swallowed and shook his head. “No,” he said, an edge of fear creeping into his voice. It quickly spiraled into panic. “No, we’re going back. I’m not risking my life over this. This stupid project isn’t worth it. The fame isn’t worth it, not if I’m dead.”

Junkrat’s own adrenaline level spiked. “No, no, no, we’re not goin’ back! Just a few more metres, come on, we’re almost there--”

“I am not getting even a millimetre closer to that thing!” His hand went to the lever that controlled the boat’s engine. Junkrat batted it away.

“Don’t you fuckin’ wuss out on me now, ya spineless coward--”

“I’d rather be a coward than dead!” Jae-won stood up. Junkrat quickly followed suit. The boat rocked violently.

“Oh boo hoo, yer not gonna die! Melodramatic little--” The irony of calling someone else melodramatic when he went over the top with his emotions on a daily basis was lost on him.

“I don’t care!” Jae-won’s eyes darted every which way, his head whipping from side to side as he sought an escape route.

There was only one way out.

Junkrat lunged a split second too late. Jae-won dove into the ocean, and the force of his graceful swan dive sent the boat lurching to the left. “No!” Junkrat shouted. He thrust his arm over the side of the boat in a desperate attempt to grab Jae-won before he swam away. “No, no, no, ya son of a bitch, get back he--” His words were cut short as the boat overturned. Junkrat’s feet flew out from underneath him, and he plunged into the ocean. In the tumultuous commotion, he had failed to realise that placing all his weight on one side was too much for the already tilting boat. The pulse bomb, the hard drive, the harpoon -- all of their equipment sank fast, lost to the depths of the ocean.

Ice, was his first thought. The freezing water hit him with a shock that paralysed his nervous system, numbing him to his core.

His stunned reaction was momentary, a brief, frigid second before his survival instincts kicked in. Junkrat thrashed in the water, but the metal of his arm and leg weighed him down, pulling him beneath the surface. He panicked and kicked his way back up, but his prosthetics weren’t buoyant, and they were going to drag him to his death. There was no way he could detach them, not when he was struggling to stay afloat. He had never learned to swim, he’d never had anywhere where he could learn to swim. Panic alarms sounded in his head. He was supposed to die in a glorious burst of smoke and flames, not like this, helpless and choking on salt water.

There was a buoy a couple of metres away. If he could just get onto it -- but between the weight of his thick sweater, his metal arm and leg, and his utter lack of swimming prowess, he was sinking fast. He tried to shout for help, not even caring about the consequences of getting caught, but all that came out was a bubbly gurgle as his mouth dipped below the waves.

This was it. Jae-won had sent him to a watery grave. His head sank beneath the ocean’s surface, and his vision spotted as he inhaled water in a desperate attempt to gulp down the nonexistent oxygen.

There was a deafening clang of metal on metal as something enormous struck the buoy he was struggling to reach.

At first he thought an omnic had gotten him, and he made the hasty decision that he would rather drown than owe his life to an omnic. Then it kicked in: it wasn’t an omnic, but a hefty military mech that scooped him up before it took off with another burst of energy.

He gasped and sucked down a precious lungful of air before looking at his savior. The pink mech was piloted by a young girl, barely an adult, who was speaking to an unseen audience.

“To those of you just tuning in, sorry we’re going AFK for a sec, this noob needs some serious help!”

Junkrat had the distinct impression that he had just been insulted. His pride was already wounded enough, he didn’t need the added knowledge that there were people witnessing his failure. He thrashed in the mech’s arms. “Put me down, put me down!” he shouted.

The girl behind the thrusters looked down at him. “Okay!” Junkrat’s stomach lurched as the mech dropped him a foot before catching him again. He clutched the mech, terrified. His life had flashed before his eyes in that brief split-second plummet. “Pick me up, pick me up!” he backpedaled. The pilot giggled.

She deposited him on solid ground, and Junkrat coughed violently, regurgitating seawater as he clung to the earth. All he could process was the smell of fish and seaweed and the salty taste of the ocean. He rolled over onto his back in time to see the girl in the mech bid him farewell.

“Gee tee gee!” she said with a cheeky wink. What the fuck does that mean? Junkrat thought. He could still hear her narration before she activated her fusion boosters once more. “And we’re back in the fight! Get ready for some major pwnage, everybody!”

He sat there, shivering violently and hacking up seawater as he watched the mech rejoin the fray of MEKA operators. For a brief second, he admired the machinery behind it -- he’d seen similar contraptions in Junkertown, where mech battles were the primary form of entertainment. Nothing anywhere near as sleek or sophisticated as the girl’s pink mech, however. Junker mechs were cobbled together monstrosities, made out of scavenged parts and spikes that would have been immediately deemed illegal in civilised society. The battered flags of rival gangs and the peeling paint jobs couldn’t hold a candle to the beauty of a regulation Korean MEKA unit.

The moment of admiration was fleeting, and all at once, the fury that had been overtaken by fear came rushing back to him. This was supposed to be his moment of glory, and it was over before it even began. He was livid as he pushed himself up onto his feet, pegleg wobbling slightly. Where was Roadhog? He needed Roadhog to stabilise him, he was dangerously close to losing it as it was.

“Sir!” someone yelled. Junkrat ignored the shouting until the voice came from by his elbow. He realised that he was the one being addressed. He had never in his life been referred to as a ‘sir.’

“Sir, can you give us a few words about what just occurred? What were you doing out there? How does it feel to be rescued by MEKA’s latest prodigy, Hana Song?” An over-eager reporter shoved a microphone in his face.

Junkrat backed away. Another reporter joined in, and he stumbled back another step. The attention was severely freaking him out, a fight-or-flight reaction further amplified by his separation from Roadhog.

He fumbled for one of the grenade canisters he had attached to his hip in lieu of his usual harness, which didn’t fit properly over his now soaking wet sweater. He doubted the contents would function properly after being so thoroughly submerged, but it worked for his purposes. “Get back!” he said, voice shrill and panicky. He brandished a grenade like a cross to ward off vampires. “Get back, or I’ll blow us all to kingdom come!”

Someone grabbed the back of his waterlogged sweater, and he twisted frantically, only relaxing when he saw that it was Roadhog. Even then, he was still amped up and so tense that he was practically vibrating.

“No comment,” Roadhog told the reporter and his accompanying camera crew. He threw Junkrat over his shoulder and booked it: the further away they were from the cameras, the better. Their exploits were making it more and more likely that they would be recognised.

Roadhog carrying him was for the best; Junkrat wasn’t sure how much more his pegleg could take after the deluge of saline water that wrecked the suction of his leg’s socket. Still, he was antsy, itching to find Jae-won and make him pay. He squirmed in Roadhog’s grip, looking around for the traitor. “Where is he? I’m gonna kill him -- we gotta find him, Roadhog! Where you goin’? Are we chasin’ after him?”

“No,” Roadhog replied. “He’s gone. Lost sight of him when I was trying to get to you.”

Junkrat swore and twisted around on Roadhog’s shoulder to better address him. “This close, Hog! We were this close, and then that goddamn wuss ruined everything! All my hard work-- all our hard work is at the bottom of the ocean, I can’t believe-- He better hope I don’t ever see him again, because I’m gonna fuckin’ kill him--” In his hysteria, his voice was gradually rising in both volume and pitch.

Roadhog flinched away from him. “Stop screeching in my ear.”

“Sorry.” Junkrat dropped back down to bury his face in the back of Roadhog’s sweater. “Why arentcha as pissed off as I am?”

“I am,” Roadhog said, and the downright resentment in those two syllables sent a chill down Junkrat’s spine. With his ever present mask, it was hard to read Roadhog’s emotions when he was being practical and getting them out of danger. “I’d gut him before you got a chance to kill him.”

“Hmm. I’ll cut ya a deal then, mate. You can kill him, as long as I get to burn the body afterwards.”

“Deal.”

“Make it real bloody.”

“I will.”

“Blood’s a good colour on ya, I ever tell ya that?”

Roadhog snorted, and Junkrat felt significantly less rancorous. As long as he didn’t think too hard about Jae-won, at any rate.

The anger returned when they reached the safety of their house and Roadhog deposited him on the ground. Roadhog sat on the floor, winded from the journey back, and Junkrat joined him. He looked around the room, and all he could see was the remnants of their work with Jae-won: the laptop and stolen merchandise Jae-won had given them, the dirty mattress that he had slept on, the empty takeaway bags from the times he had insisted on “real” food.

“Burn it,”  Junkrat said in disgust. “We should just burn this whole place to the ground and move on. Y’can’t pay me enough to make me stay here after all that. Like even if he didn’t make everythin’ go arse over tits, I almost drowned, ‘Hog!” He balled his fists up.  ”That rat bastard -- no, no, rat’s too good a word for him. That -- that --” He paused his tirade to think. “What’s the opposite of a rat? An elephant?”

“Cat?” Roadhog suggested.

“That cat bastard left me alone to fuckin’ drown!”

“I know. He deserves to die. Violently.”

“Damn straight, he does!”

Roadhog hesitated. “Sorry I couldn’t save you.” He sounded troubled. “You were too far away to hook.”

Junkrat waved his concern away. “What were ya supposed to do, swim all the way out there and tow me to safety?” He paused. “I mean, that woulda been nice, but come on. Kinda unrealistic. I woulda been dead by the time ya got to me anyway.”

“Probably.” Roadhog sighed.

Junkrat scooted closer so that he could wrap his arms around Roadhog. “Hey, s’all good, mate. I’m still alive, ain’t I? Y’ve saved my arse so many times, it was about time ya gave someone else a fair go of it.”

“Mmm.” Roadhog didn’t sound reassured, but he returned Junkrat’s hug nonetheless.

“...But the code!” Junkrat resumed his rant, unable to get off the topic of Jae-won’s betrayal. “All that hard work!”

They didn’t waste time in packing up their belongings. Junkrat was too keen to leave Busan and Jae-won and “that bloody ocean” behind.

“Ready?” Roadhog asked. They stood next to the motorcycle, its boot and sidecar carrying their belongings.

“Hell, yes!” Junkrat’s thumb hovered over the button of his detonator. His blowtorch was somewhere in Davy Jones’ locker, so he would have to set the building ablaze using explosives. Not that he was complaining.

A tremulous voice called out from behind them. “You leaving?” They turned around to find the middle-aged woman they’d seen on their first night in town, their illegal neighbor who hadn’t turned them in despite their obvious criminal nature.

“Yeah, time to hit the road again,” Junkrat said.

She nodded. “Good luck,” she said, the thickly accented words managing to be both warm and wistful.

Junkrat and Roadhog looked at each other. She reminded Junkrat of a Junker he had known when he was very young. She had been frail and elderly, her face gaunt from lack of food. Everyone had placed bets on when she would die, but she turned out to be a survivor and lasted a good three or four years in the harsh and unforgiving Outback. Junkrat had always liked her; she had been surprisingly handy, and she had given him the mechanical handbooks that he used to learn how to read.

He nudged Roadhog. “Where’s the wallets?” he muttered. Roadhog handed them over with a small noise of surprise. “Hey, uh,” Junkrat began, addressing the woman. He didn’t know what to say, exactly. He’d never done anything like this before. Too socially inept to find the right words, he just threw them at her. “Here.”

The woman shrank into herself as the wallets thumped her shoulder, then hit the floor. She looked down at them, then at him, incomprehension written all over her face. “For me?” she asked.

He nodded. “Sure.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. She hugged them, pulling Junkrat tight against Roadhog’s side as she tried to wrap her stubby arms around the both of them.

Junkrat went stiff as a board at the sudden physical contact. He managed to blurt out part of a “get off” before he choked back the rest of the words. “Geh--” And yet, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. He hadn’t been touched by anyone but Roadhog since they said goodbye to Ava and Rosa. Even then, it had taken a long time for him to get comfortable enough with them.

He was relieved when she released them and thanked them profusely. “Oh, thank you -- bless you both!”

“Wow,” was all Roadhog said as they walked back to their motorcycle.

“Don’t worry, I’m not makin’ a habit of that,” Junkrat assured him. “But she reminded me of someone, so sue me. And I for one don’t plan on comin’ back here ever, so what else were we gonna do with all that won? S’dead weight.” It occurred to him that he didn’t know how much won, exactly, he had just given away. “How much money was left in those wallets, anyway?”

“Not that much.”

Junkrat shrugged. “Eh, every bit helps, I guess?” He hadn’t saved her from her plight, but he hadn’t expected to, either. He was no hero; people could rescue themselves. It was the Junker way: every man for himself. Maybe she would be able to claw her way out of the slums herself, using their little startup fund. He’d never find out one way or another. “Whatever. Let’s beat it.”

They left in a cloud of exhaust, their house still standing behind them.

[georginamarsdenfmp]

I found drawing these outfits and experimenting from them really helped me to pick my final outfits. I think if I had gone into it without considering different options and drawing out the pieces altogether wouldn't have created a successful outcome. I also could considering my target audience more this way as well such as what is suitable and relevant to them. My outfit choices are a purple graphic tee with a white skirt, a white dress with a pink raincoat, a gingham babydoll dress and a blue jacket with mum jeans. I now need to work on my hair and makeup to go with these outfits.

Before I realised my final video idea, I decided to start drawing outfit ideas to help me think of my theme for my final piece. I started off my drawing out the shape of a women, I then drew on the clothes and coloured them in. My first idea was a black mesh top with pink hearts on the front, combined with high waisted black denim shorts and pink jelly shoes with pastel frilly socks and a necklace to accessorise. The festival style summer outfits inspired this look. They are often very daring and out there and wouldn't be suitable to be worn in someone's day-to-day life. This outfit is very appropriate for summer as it doesn't cover up a lot and it’s also very comfy which is suitable for a festival. However, because of how explicit it is, I don't think this outfit is suitable for my blog’s target audience as they are quite young. I wouldn't want to be creating the wrong idea in my younger audience's minds. My next look also related to be festival scenes but it’s a lot more wearable. I thought that this would be more suitable for my audience as it’s more covered up. It involves a pink mesh top with a black cami underneath, blue high waisted jeans and black boots. I think this look is very nice, but I don’t think the tight jeans relate to summer very well. Also the black shoes and top create quite a harsh contrast and so isn’t suitable for my ideas now. The final look I created was inspired by popular trends happening right now and how to style them. I picked fishnets and paired them with a black high neck top, a burgundy A-line skirt and black boots. I like this outfit, however, it is very dark. There are no bright colours involved apart from the skirt and so this outfit wouldn't be suitable to be posted on my blog in the summer. I think this outfit is more appropriate for autumn or winter.

I left the sketches for a while whilst I did more research and settled on my final idea, which is pastel summer. I then began to create outfits appropriate for my final piece. My first outfit involves a pink puffer jacket, a white crop top, blue high waisted jeans and black boots. I really like the way this outfit looks together but the black boots aren’t suitable for my theme. I wanted to experiment with them just to see if they would work, however, looking at it now I think the contrast is too strong. I also think the high waisted jeans aren’t correct for my theme. They don’t really give off the feel of summer, as they’re tight and quite dark. I think the combination of the pink and white at the top though. However, the top and the jacket are too autumn and winter style as they are dark and bulky.

My next outfit involves a ringer t-shirt, a white tennis skirt, thigh high socks and black Converse. I really like the tennis skirt as I think skirts are very summer appropriate and it suits the pastel theme. However, I need to work more on the t-shirt part of this outfit, as I’m not sure which style to choose yet. I don’t like the socks and the black Converse as again they are too wintery and the socks make the outfit look too busy. I’ve decided to experiment more with skirts, so I have chosen to pair a light pink tennis skirt with a purple graphic tee, a backpack and white Converse. I really like the look of the graphic tee tucked into the skirt and the bag doesn’t distract away from the design. However, I think the pink and the purple clash too much. I think the t-shirt will stand out more with a plainer skirt. So I have tried this t-shirt with the original white and black skirt. I think this looks a lot better as the black detail from the skirt, t-shirt and straps on the bag all link together well. The white Converse also matches the skirt and show off the daisy anklet accessory. The t-shirt links to my research about 2017 trends as I found out that graphic t-shirts are a very popular trend. Therefore, wearing this t-shirt will be relatable to my target audience as they could style an outfit in a similar way. I really like this outfit and will definitely use it in my final piece stylised video.

My next outfit involves a distressed pink denim jacket, a pink bralette, high waisted jeans and pink Converse. I really liked the denim jacket as it adds a contrasting grungy feel to the pastel colours. I think the bralette might be too inappropriate for my younger target audience as it shows off a lot of skin. I think the jeans contrast too harshly with the rest of the pink clothing pieces. After this outfit, I know for sure that I don’t want to include these jeans, I have tried to incorporate them and make them work but I will try something else from now on. However, I do want to incorporate trousers somehow into this lookbook. So I have decided to experiment with a different style that looks more summery.

My next outfit involves a black high neck top with a pink shearling jacket and mum jeans with low top pink Converse. I really like the pink Converse and mum jeans in this outfit. I think the mum jeans are a lot more suitable than the other jeans. They are looser with rips in them and they are also a lighter blue so they look more summery. They also leave a space between the end of the jeans and the shoes for an anklet, which is very summery. I will experiment more with these. I wanted to play around with these jeans more so I paired them with a lilac lace bralette. I think this looks very elegant and contrasts with the casual jeans. The bralette suits my pastel theme but unfortunately it is too inappropriate as the lace is very sheer which wouldn't be suitable for my target audience. So I decided to piece the jeans with a blue and white crop top, blue 80s styles wind cheater and white Converse. I’m really glad I experimented more with these jeans because I love the outcome of this outfit. The blues all work together well and the white shoes link to the white of the crop top. This outfit is very comfy and is more appropriate for my target audience. I think adding coats and jackets to the outfits makes them more relatable to any weather depending on where my target audience is from.

As I have yet to include a dress into my design I decided to incorporate one for this outfit. The dress is white with a pink raincoat on top with pink Converse and frilly socks. I think this outfit is perfect for my lookbook. As the dress is white it looks very clean and fresh, it reminds me of fields and sun which all remind me of summer. The coat is suitable as it’s light and relates to how unpredictable English weather is. The pink shoes also link to the coat. I wanted to look more into dresses in my lookbook. So I decided to create a night look featuring pastel colours, as I haven’t done this yet. This outfit involved a pink velvet dress with a white lace frill, with pink fur heels and a pink bag. I really like this outfit as the fabrics and pinks work well together. However, I’m not sure if a night look will be relatable and relevant to my target audience as they could be quite young. Also as my lookbook is a summer theme, I’m not sure if this will be obvious if I shoot at nighttime with this look. So I’m not going to choose this outfit for my final piece. My next dress idea involves and gingham pink and white babydoll with a pink backpack, heart glasses and pink jelly shoes. This outfit is very inspired by my research of Lolita. As the main characters often wears shaped glasses and gingham I really liked how fun and childish this looks which I wanted to recreate. I really like this look because it’s very comfy and suitable for the summer. Gingham is also a popular trend for summer fashion, which I found out during my research, and so by wearing this dress my target audience could recreate the outfit as they could buy gingham in shops.

My final outfit designs are inspired by my research. My first outfit is heavily influenced by my research of Lolita. This outfit involves a off the shoulder top with a flounce. It also has a polka dot pattern. This is paired with high waisted blue denim shorts and bowling shoes. I really like this outfit as it would be appropriate for the summer and it looks very summery. I think the flounce on the top, which looks, very fun and feminine. The blowing shoes work well with the outfit even though they wouldn't be something I'd often wear. My final outfit involves a pink and white loose fitting shirt with a belt to cinch in the waist and dolly shoes. This outfit was inspired by my research of 2017 summer trends as I found out that stripes and shirts are very popular so I decided to combine these. I chose to add a belt to cinch in the waist to make the shirt look more feminine and flattering. I added dolly shoes to add more femininity to the outfit. I really like both of these outfits, but unfortunately I don’t have the correct clothes to pieces these outfits together. I would have to buy these pieces, which I don’t want to do, as I don’t have a lot of my budget left. Drawing these design was useful though as I gained some more inspiration for styles.

[entergamingxp]

XCOM: Chimera Squad review – a generous and inventive spin on a tactical classic • Eurogamer.net

Breaching a room is one of those weird things that games turn out to be brilliant at. It’s pure tactics – information with stimulating gaps in it. A bunch of bad guys are waiting behind closed doors. You know some things about them but you don’t know everything. How are you going to open the doors?

XCOM: Chimera Squad review

Developer: Firaxis Games

Publisher: 2K Games

Platform: Reviewed on PC

Availability: Out now on PC

It’s a wonder, really, that it’s taken a classic tactics series like XCOM so long to try a bit of breaching. XCOM 2 encouraged you to think of ambushes, sure, but with XCOM: Chimera Squad, the latest instalment in the series and a standalone adventure with a somewhat focused scope, breaching finally has its moment.

And it’s glorious. Chimera’s missions play out room by room, essentially – or encounter by encounter really as most of the game’s spaces are multi-room environments – and with none of the prolonged knocking around looking for a fight that previous XCOM games used to feature. Each encounter starts with a breach. You choose your door, you choose who opens it and who goes in next, you plan, you fiddle around, you change your plan and switch everyone out again and have a comforting Pop-Tart – just me? – and then you commit.

Pure tactics, information with gaps in it: every door tells you how high the likelihood is that you’ll take damage. Every door generally offers its own twists too. Maybe your shots will stun if you use this door. Maybe they’ll crit. Maybe the first one through can’t miss. Maybe the last one through won’t be able to move afterwards. Maybe everyone gets free Overwatch. Generally you have a choice of doors and windows to spread your four-person team across, and you can buy items as the game progresses that allows access to new doors – security doors and vents, say. I love this breach moment – it’s new, but it already feels like pure XCOM. You’ve thought about the odds, the perks. You’ve lined up your guys. Pop-Tart. BREACH.

Once you’re through time gets wonderfully thick and soupy. It reminds me a little of the stand-offs in John Woo’s Stranglehold, may it rest in glorious peace. Everyone gets a chance to breach fire – which means you each get a free shot as you scramble through the doors. If you’re playing on easy where the dice are loaded in your favour, four people coming through a door can often clear out four baddies. But even if you’re not, once the breach fire period is over your team scramble to cover and then it’s classic XCOM. Turns, cover, dice rolls, disaster.

Except it’s not, because everywhere throughout Chimera Squad there are playful tweaks and rebalances. Firaxis always strike me as the molecular gastronomists of the strategy and tactics world, a wide, dappled genre that in itself is sort of the molecular gastronomy of video games. Anyway: Firaxis can’t stop fiddling with things. Instead of foams and crumbs and airs, though, these designers like to dig down into the basics of a game and ask fundamental questions. Chimera Squad asks: hey, how about breaching? And then it asks: how about smaller maps, which play out as stacked encounters, so there’s no fat, as it were, no connective tissue to worry about.

But it hasn’t stopped tweaking there. In classic XCOM you move your guys and then the aliens move their guys. Chimera Squad opts for interleaved moves. Wonderful word, interleaved. Precise and papercrafty – one for the specialists, the scholars, the obsessives. Interleaved moves means one of your guys makes a move, and maybe one of theirs goes next? It makes fights much more dynamic, and more personal. You have more power, but with XCOM that always means the power to screw up. Classic XCOM meant that a situation you hadn’t foreseen could pop up and be resolved – usually tragically – in the course of an alien turn with little for you to do but stand around and take it. Classic XCOM was somewhat concerned with the delicious pain of tactical paralysis.

By contrast, Chimera Squad means you can see a situation develop and then you have the chance to do something, because you might get a turn in between two alien turns. But with that power comes the fact that this is still XCOM: clear shots can miss, aliens can be extra sneaky, things can go wrong in enormously creative ways. Interleaved moves bring great invention and dynamism and even wit to the game. And of course, it’s all information with gaps in it: the turn ticker is clearly visible on one side of the screen, and there are unit powers that allow you to sacrifice a shot, say, for the chance to change the order of turns to your advantage, to shuffle one of your cards in before one of theirs and save the day. Or try to save it, anyway. But what will the response be?

How deep does the tinkering with the basics go? It’s wrong with Chimera Squad even to talk of your turns and alien turns. This latest game plays out after the events of XCOM 2, in a city where humanity and aliens are trying to get along together. How are things going? Well, in the opening cut-scene the mayor is blown up in a truck. So they’re not going very well. I think Firaxis is aiming for something a bit like The Third Man’s Berlin, parcelled up amongst uneasy “allies”. It’s a lovely setting for an XCOM game. Previously they’ve concerned themselves with invasions. This one’s more about insurrection – insurrection played out in three acts, and three factions’ investigations.

And all of this means that your squad is formed of human and alien team-members. The focus on Chimera Squad is much more personal than most XCOM games. Your team have cut-scenes and names and personalities and dialogue and banter and everything. It’s XCOM: the Saturday Morning Cartoon, even before you get to the stylised storytelling sequences that use lurid four-colour layouts and halftones that can’t help but remind me – oh glory! – of the beautifully ugly excesses of Codename STEAM.

Does it feel weird that you can’t name your own soldiers anymore? In truth, I didn’t miss it that much. After a few hours I’d forgotten that I ever used to go into battle with units named after my favourite takeaway restaurants. I started to feel close to my new guys, from the awkward muton who sometimes sounds like Jeff Bridges to the techy who always misses – for me at least – but has a drone that shocks anyone who gets too close, a kind of electrical wasp at the XCOM picnic. Keeping units alive for the whole game means that XCOM’s power snowball thing is in full effect: you can get to a point where everyone’s so riddled with interesting skills that you start to feel bad for the guys you’re up against. But I was still learning to get the best out of people by the end of the surprisingly involved campaign. One of my guys had psionic powers and could change places with any unit on the battlefield. This meant if a mission-critical baddy was making a break for the exit I could swap places and move them into the heart of my ranks. But it also meant I could zap high cost baddies over to exploding barrels and then touch them off. The fun never ends.

Ah the campaign. Given the low price for a standalone game I was expecting Chimera Squad to clock in at about three or four hours. In truth, it kept me busy for two days on my first playthrough. What’s happened, I think, is a narrowing of focus: shorter missions, smaller teams, a simpler strategy layer and throughline.

I think the new strategy layer is fantastic. I love settling in for a game of XCOM 2, knowing that I’ll be dozens of hours deep before I realise I made a crucial mistake at the two hour mark, but it can be quite an elbowy and confusing game, with layouts, maps, and perhaps not quite the clearest sense of all the things you should be focusing on, at least for your first chaotic attempt. Chimera Squad is much more straightforward. Base building’s out and the whole thing is set in a single city as you chase down a single mystery, one suspect faction at a time. Alongside missions that advance the story, you also have missions that earn you resources and also allow time to pass until the next story mission becomes available. While all this is going on you have to monitor the whole city, making sure tension never gets too high in each of the districts. Completing missions in a district will bring the tension down, but you can also buy agencies that sit in each district and have limited powers to calm things down in interesting ways, or at least freeze the escalation for a few turns. All of this is presented via a 3D map that is colour-coded so you can instantly see how things are going. If most districts are blue, then happy days, as Tuffers would say. I wouldn’t mind getting Tuffers in an XCOM team.) If they start to turn towards red you’re going to have to do something.

There is a term for this kind of thing – I want to call it the small blanket problem or something like that? Anyway, in classic XCOM style, you never have enough time and resources and people to maintain total calm in the city. You’re always making trade-offs. And when it comes to your people the trade-offs never stop. You need four team-members to go out on missions, but you also want to staff the streamlined lab that makes breakthroughs and allows for new gadgets. You want to send people away on Spec-Ops that earn you resources or may lower tension in the city. If people are wounded – or if you just want to improve their stats – you’ll want to send them for training. All of this means you’re juggling who you can actually take out shooting, trying to make sure everybody gets leveled up nicely and gets new abilities, while also ensuring that nobody’s battle damage results in untreated “scars” that affect their stats.

It’s a lot to think about – of course it is, it’s XCOM. But Chimera Squad is a lot more approachable than XCOM 2. It’s more direct, less expansive, sure, but also a little less muddlesome to stupid people like me. This isn’t XCOM 3, but it isn’t pretending to be. It’s something different – a characterful, sharp-edged, surprisingly rich side-quest. It will keep me busy for hours and hours, I think. That’s the thing about doors – I always want to know what’s on the other side.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/04/xcom-chimera-squad-review-a-generous-and-inventive-spin-on-a-tactical-classic-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=xcom-chimera-squad-review-a-generous-and-inventive-spin-on-a-tactical-classic-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #370

Top Ten Videogame Protagonists

Games, eh? Don’t you just love ‘em? I mean, the good ones at least. Or sometimes even not just the good ones. Sometimes ones that are a bit pants but somehow get under your skin. Or, if not exactly pants, then just kind of “OK”, sort-of-a-little-bit-mediocre, but they scratch an itch that needs scratching, especially if they’re mobile games and you’re after something relatively untaxing but time-wastey.

Sorry, where was I?

Anyway, a funny thing about games is the concept of the protagonist. Games – even narrative games – are different from other forms of art and media because of the issue of control. You are supposed to be the protagonist. And in narrative games – or games that can roughly be described as following a narrative, which is to say, not sports games – designers can either present a protagonist who is themselves a fully-formed character, or they can offer a nonentity, a blank slate upon which you can draw your own personality. Are you Mario or is Mario you? It’s Duke Nukem versus Gordon Freeman. A character versus an avatar.

So here we are then. My favourite video game protagonists. The main characters; the ones you play. Some of these I think are cool characters in their own right; some of them are, like I implied above, silicon avatars, canvases, a means for you to interact with the world. And that’s alright; that’s what they’re there for. But they do it so well, in such a way as to help elucidate greater meanings for the game in question. I always felt – to digress a little around the same topic – that in the original Knights of the Old Republic, I created a character out of whole cloth; they were me, it was as if I were playing through the events of the game. They were a digital representation of my psyche. But in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, because the demands of the plot necessitated my character to jump through certain hoops, I began playing as that character; assuming a role, so to speak. Rather than “what if I were a Jedi,” I began playing as “what if I were this Jedi; what would I want this Jedi to do?” I found this very rewarding, even if the second game is somewhat inferior to the first.

But I can’t quite remember why I felt those things, which makes me want to play both games again.

Where was I? Oh yeah – top ten game protagonists. Press A to start.

Guybrush Threepwood (The Secret of Monkey Island, 1990): a perfect example of playing a character. Guybrush is fully-formed and all you do is point him at stuff. Witty, silly, naïve, heroic; you don’t shape his character, and with only one real path through the games, all you do is pick which one-liner he’ll deliver next.

Lara Croft (Tomb Raider, 1996): although mostly a blank slate, the iconography of Lara – shorts, vest, combat boots, two huge guns – helped reinforce the character you were playing; tough, no-nonsense, fully capable, physically adept, a female Indiana Jones.

Kyle Katarn (Star Wars: Dark Forces, 1995): almost machine-tooled to be the perfect Star Wars fan-service character – Han Solo but a Jedi! – Katarn is admirably sarky through his entire life, a voice of cynicism even when in full-on hero mode. This is supported in cut-scenes, whilst in-game you get to indulge in wish-fulfilment, especially in sequel Jedi Knight, the first game to really let you wield a lightsaber. The element of choice was revolutionary in those days, allowing you to embrace the Light Side or the Dark, with requisite powers and different endings, and Katarn reflected your player choice perfectly.

Manuel Calavera (Grim Fandango, 1998): like Guybrush, Calavera is a complete character; indeed, he’s more realistic and nuanced than Guybrush, despite being a skeleton with a clunky polygonal head. Beautifully brought to life by Tony Plana (Ugly Betty’s dad!), Manny is funny, earnest, and quietly heroic, and you feel for him sufficiently to want him to complete his quest even when trying to negotiate the weird rotational control system and walk across multiple pre-rendered backgrounds to get to the next objective.

Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark, 2000): like Lara Croft, Joanna Dark is mostly character through iconography: a futuristic catsuit, nifty-looking fun, and funky sci-fi spy gadgets. But by speaking in cut-scenes we get more of her identity, even though it’s still a thin characterisation; she’s basically Lady James Bond but in the future. However, being Lady James Bond but in the future is a fantastic hook, and a nice turn in cut-glass upper-class deadpan goes a long way.

Luigi (Mario Bros., 1983): Mario and Luigi began life virtually interchangeable, just two different avatars, their very look dictated by the constraints of the hardware. But over time, as Mario became a veritable superhero, Luigi began to plough his own furrow as the more timid, more peaceable brother. His scaredy-cat antics in Luigi’s Mansion helped solidify this, and his meme-worthy Mario Kart side-eye hinted at a desire to score one over on his brother from time to time. Although still, really, a fairly blank slate game-wise, his is a story of character through decades of hints and gags and side-appearances.

Conrad B. Hart (Flashback, 1992): another blank slate, literally this time, as you play as an amnesiac with no idea why you were outrunning hoverbike-riding bad guys in the opening cutscene. Conrad sticks in my memory, though, through his beautiful animation; despite the stylised polygonal character design, he looked and felt fully human as he ran, rolled, and leaped across the screen.

Duke Nukem (Duke Nukem, 1991): a near-perfect marriage of game icon and game play; Duke embodies the very essence of Duke Nukem 3D. A brash and loud platform/shooter character in two original outings, it’s the seminal classic FPS for which he will always be remembered. Crass, vulgar, offensive, violent; all this and more. He’s a rather unlikeable character, but in leaning into his outlandish, boorish machismo, 3D Realms created a hilarious game which reflected the persona of its star to a tee. I’d love to see him brought back in a way that parodied the current culture of toxic masculinity, although I fear a good portion of the audience wouldn’t see the joke.

Dizzy (Dizzy – The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure, 1987): he’s an egg! Like, a walking egg! What’s up with that? Back when other folk were getting down with Mario or even Sonic, I was enjoying Britain’s bedroom coder equivalent. Characterful and cartoonish when that was virtually unheard of in games, Dizzy felt like a breath of fresh air, even if he probably smelt like a sweaty omelette.

Gordon Freeman (Half-Life, 1998): whilst “blank” characters are common in FPS games – Doom, Quake, Unreal, etc – Half-Life made that a feature. Gordon’s muteness became a character trait; was he traumatised, otherworldly, indifferent? As his messianic legend grew in Half-Life 2, and he became surrounded by believable and verbose characters, his silent demeanour and unconventional behaviour (really just standard FPS tropes) became more and more incongruous, and delightfully commented upon by those around him. Gordon Freeman represents, parodies, and explores every notion of player-character as transparent avatar, and does it utterly perfectly, creating his own distinct character even as he just utterly gets out of the way of you playing. You are Gordon, even though Gordon is really a nothing. Masterfully done.

I should have laid down some ground rules… the main one, I guess, was that all these characters had to debut within that game, which meant no Sam or Max, sadly. And though I’m listing their first appearances, in some cases it was a subsequent game where I fell in love with them (for instance, although I’d played Dark Forces, I became a fan of Kyle Katarn after playing and adoring Jedi Knight). Finally, I hope it’s obvious, but these are protagonists, not just game characters; the people you play as, properly, in a game (so not, say, Garrus from Mass Effect, even though you can control him during combat; the protagonist is still Shepard). This means no Elaine Marley or Alyx Vance. And though I’ve included “vessels” such as Dizzy and Freeman, I have excluded characters like Shepard, who really are just blank slates, to the point where you can even control what they look like (J.C. Denton nearly made the cut, though, as he does have a little bit more of a character of his own).

[teaandgames]

Revisited - Paper Mario (2000)

I’m not sure it was wise giving Mario a giant hammer. This is a guy with a boot that can crush half the kingdom after all. Doesn’t seem like this chap needs more destructive power, to be honest with you. But power is the key motivation in Paper Mario - along with saving Peach of course. This is a Mario RPG, so this power isn’t going to be found by running very fast towards the right hand of the screen. Instead you’re going to be doing a lot of talking and exploring.

The result is a wonderful and charming game that, in my opinion, has aged remarkably well. A large part of that is due to the art style and the inoffensive humour - it’s something that gives off the same feelings now as it did when it was released eighteen years ago. Although you now don’t have to play it using one of the most bizarre controllers known to man. Such is the beauty of the virtual console that has now brought back a timeless classic - unhampered by some stodgy gameplay and a few problems with the world.

Paper Mario has a fairly familiar tale, so stop me if you’ve heard it. Everything is going well in the Mushroom Kingdom and Princess Peach (where’s the ruler at this point, by the way?) invites Mario and his better, more handsome brother, Luigi over for a party. Typically, Bowser shows up uninvited and kidnaps the princess. Kidnaps the entire castle in fact. Mario is still inside, however, so he stands up to Bowser. Bowser has a new toy called the Star Rod though and he absolutely crushes Mario in a way that won’t be seen again until Mario Odyssey.

Mario must pick himself up off the ground and collect enough stars to defeat Bowser. Although in this case, the stars can talk and one of them has a Ned Flanders-esque mustache. This is a Mario RPG, in case you hadn’t noticed. It’s about to get weird. And that weirdness, and willingness to subvert the established Mario world, is why it’s a great series. You start off in a friendly village of Goombas, for example. If you’re used the usual Mario games, your first instinct may be to stomp them. Not recommended.

Because they’re a good first indicator of the writing in Paper Mario. It’s held up really well. There are a few instances where it tries to be, for the lack of a better phrase, ‘down with the kids’ but it’s very rare. Especially when compared to the later entries in the series. Instead, each character is full of lighthearted and genuinely funny humour. For example, take the friendly bob-omb Bombette. Usually fun and sweet to talk to, but at one point towards the end she told me that, if I had accidentally hit her with the hammer, she would’ve bombed me while I slept. Lovely gal.

This is by far the most timeless part of Paper Mario. Even if you’re not into the papercraft art style, the silly, smart writing should tide you over. But let’s not gloss over that art style. I have a soft spot for the more experimental, or otherwise stylised, art styles. It’s why games like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker or Hyper Light Drifter won’t go out of style. They look good because they don’t go for reality. Paper Mario is the same. Everything has a delightful arts-and-crafts project aspect to it, which the game really plays up on. It looks bright, colourful and just nice to run around in.

Also to fight in, which is important as that makes up roughly fifty to sixty percent of Paper Mario. Combat is turn based. You, and the companion of your choice, take it turns to hash it out with a large number of enemies from the Super Mario roster. The variation is quite impressive actually. There are a few palette swaps here and there, particularly towards the end, but it dips its hand deep into the Mario toybox. The turn based combat itself isn’t bad either. While it’s a lot simpler compared to other examples of the genre, it also allows the player to engage more. You have to time button presses right to reduce or increase damage.

It’s a fresh touch that doesn’t entirely do away with the big problem. See, the boss fights in Paper Mario are fantastic. Usually they have some little variation. Take the lava piranha plant, buried deep under a volcano, as a prime example. It has two little plants that unfurl next to it. If you don’t deal with them, things are going to get hot. Another boss has you defeat his heart before him. It shakes things up in a way that the general combat doesn’t. Standard fights quickly become trivial and a little tiresome - especially when you accidentally wander into one. You can avoid them but sometimes you slip up and running away loses you coins.

Admittedly a small complaint but that’s because Paper Mario is really very tight. The repetitive combat is drowned out because the constant change of level means you’re nearly always up against bosses. When you’re not, you’re against new enemies that change up the rules to suit Mario’s changing skill set. He may only be able to jump and hit things but boy does he get good at it. The constant change of setting does make things a little fragmented, this is true. The world feels like a bunch of of disconnected levels at times.

To its credit, Paper Mario does offer a lot of reasons to keep revisiting places. Some are better than others - delivering letters does get a little old, for example. But it’s a reason to keep visiting nice looking places and talking to interesting people - which is kind of the point. Paper Mario won’t convert anyone who’s not a fan of turn based combat but it offers a light, fluffy RPG experience. If you’re in the market for something a little silly, Paper Mario is your game. Pros -Great Writing -Memorable Characters -Peach actually gets some personality! -Winning art style Cons -Basic combat gets old after a while -Structure is a little formulaic Paper Mario Developer: Intelligent Systems Publisher: Nintendo Release Date(s): August 11 2000 (Japan), February 5 2001 Play it on: Nintendo 64, iQue Player (???), Wii U (Virtual Console) Played on: Wii U (Virtual Console)

[moonmurph-gamedev]

Task 2

Introduction

In task 2, I am asked to begin prototyping my user interfaces and post any idea generations or concepts I create. pre production is essential as I can better visualise what I want to create and draft it and then fully implement it into unreal engine. This is especially important for the industry as when you have other people working on the same project, The pre production is how you can share the vision and general idea of what you’re trying to create.

I’ll also take into consideration human factors during this process.

Here’s a simple flowchart detailing the way the menu system will direct the player into the game. It begins with a splash screen during the loading process. This gives the player a visual queue that the game is starting up. Then the main menu is opened with the following options:

Start Game > Takes the player to additional options

Options > Lets the player change game options

Exit Game > Exits the game application

Credits > Plays Credits for the game

If the player selects ‘Start Game’ they are then asked to either choose between starting a new play through or continuing from a previous save. Upon selecting start game the main menu will unload, the level will load and the player character will spawn. 

Whilst playing the game the player character can pause and find an additional window detailing the player controls. The game can also be exited from this menu. I’m planning on having the player controls in the pause menu as it can be accessed at any time. Fighting games in particular like Mortal Kombat are notorious for having long combos that you have to remember and navigating the menu to find them is annoying. I want to avoid that in my game and have the pause menu be direct access to the control list.

Whilst looking into some potential colour themes for my game I came across an artist and game dev called Michael Shillingburg who has a really unique and colourful style that I love. His great visuals would be perfect for a game aimed towards children and so I’ll definitely be looking at his work for inspiration when developing visuals for my project.  

I also found an interesting detailing the differences between photo-realistic and stylised game worlds. I’ve decided to go towards a minimalist stylised approach and this needs to be seen in my menu/hud too. 

‘The significant difference between realism and stylized is that with realism you are restricted to making things look ‘real’ while enhancing their visual language. With stylized you are free to play with the shapes and colors, exaggerate or remove details to enhance the look and feel in any direction. Doing so with realism would break the illusion of reality as it wouldn’t be viewed as what we perceive to be as ‘realistic’, it would not belong in our world.’ (Aava, 2017) 

I created a colour pallete in photoshop by using the eyedrop tool and taking colours that I liked from art in my moodboard. There are a lot of colours however this is spread across the game environment, particle effects and UI/UX so not all of these colours will be seen all at once. Instead they’re spread across different environments to not overwhelm the player. 

Game Title

Here’s my concept title graphic for my project. I also created an animated GIF to visualise how I’d have the title animate in game. A good use of this animation would be during a splash screen/loading screen. The pulsing animation gives the player visual feedback that the game has not frozen and it’s just taking a moment to load the next area. I chose the name BabyBot as most games popular with younger audiences have short names because they’re easier to search for online like ‘Fortnite’ or ‘Splatoon!’. The alliteration also makes the name easier to remember. 

To create this graphic I simply typed up the title ‘Baby Bot’ changed the leading of the font to reduce the space between the words then I went into the effect and gave it a thicker stroke. I chose pink and blue as they’re both colours that are common on my colour palette.I like how the gradient creates purple in the middle too. 

I then used the timeline tool to create 5 frames of the stroke reducing and enlarging. This gives it the movement. 

I’ll use what I learnt in the future when creating animated features of my menu system. As I concept more of the projects assets I’ll also stick to a general aesthetic so it all blends together well. 

My main inspiration for the title was LittleBigPlanet and it’s similar use of bold colourful fonts. I chose the name Baby Bot as it’s short, uses alliteration and refers to the robot characters which use baby like proportions which are common in cute characters. (Large Head, short limbs)

HUD Draft

I’ve created a draft for my HUD for my project. 

I’ve drafted a health bar and ability interface so far.

Here is a gif showing my concept for the ability interface. The player character will have four abilities that they’re able to activate with circle or triangle. They can hold L1 to activate the alternative ones. The symbol representing each ability will move forward to make it clear to the player what button activates what ability. 

When the abilities are on cooldown the symbol will become transparent and then pop back into full opacity when it’s ready to be used again. 

Here’s a gif showcasing my idea for the players health bar. As it’s a robot I thought it’d be fun displaying the health as a battery. As the player loses health it decreases and changes from green to orange to flashing red. This uses colours to represent the players health without relying on numbers. I have chosen this because younger demographics such as children will be able to see at a glance the characters health without having to stop and read text or percentages. 

Splash Screen

Here is my wireframe. I took inspiration from games in my moodboard such as animal crossing. The splash screen in animal crossing is the game title with a simple (press start) button underneath. I will follow a similar format for my splashscreen. 

I then went into photoshop and created my finished concept from my wireframe.

Here’s the splash screen which will prompt the player to press X to continue. I might add additional information like a company name or a project build. The reason why I changed ‘Press Start’ to ‘Press X’ is because I’m building this project with the playstation controller in mind and children will have an easier time finding the X button rather than the start button. 

Main Menu

I’ve drafted up my main menu with another wireframe. I plan to have three buttons which I planned before in my flowchart. Start, Exit and Credits. After creating my wireframe I then went into photoshop and used the 1920x1080 resolution as that’s what’s most common at the moment with monitors. I tried to keep withing the blue guidelines provided by Photoshop.

It’s a transparent background so it will showcase the game environment behind it. I’ve chosen a transparent background to give this menu a clear difference from the splash screen. 

Here’s a GIF showing how the player will scroll through the options.

I like showing the exact button itself as it leaves no room for confusion on what the player needs to press. I’ll add a sound such as a click whenever the player scrolls through different options to give an additional indicator that they’ve moved their selection. When adding sounds to a game however it’s important to think about how often the player is going to be hearing that and if it’s going to annoy them. That’s why you don’t want anything set too loud or shrill. 

Credits Screen

Here’s a draft for the credits screen. I kept to the same structure in my wire frame except that I moved the title slightly lower and larger so it overlays over the moving credits. I did this because the slow pulsing animation on the title is pleasing to look at.

Pause Menu

Here’s the pause menu when the player presses ESC or Option/Start. It has a transparent background and two large buttons. When creating my concept in photoshop however I put a slight angle on pause to make it appear more playful.

The widget will come to the viewport and blur the gameplay behind it. This is so the character can still see what’s happening onscreen even when the game is paused. They’re also able to open up the help menu which will display the character controls.

Controls Menu

When the player selects help the player is taken to this menu. When creating the wire frame I went back and looked at the credits menu and kept to the same format. This is to simply keep the menu system to a similar structure as I don’t want every page being wildly different. Games in the industry usually have a set style and stick to it throughout which I what I’m aiming to do.

Here’s the controls menu to remind the player how to use their abilities. I added the transparent white walls so the black text stands out more. The rest of the screen will show the game environment behind it. The title “Controls” is also animated as you can see from this GIF.

In-Game Dialogue

Here’s a moodboard of some ways of displaying text which I think will work well with the style I’m going for. I like the vaporwave aesthetic which often appropriates styles from 1990s-2000s. I’ll keep these three in mind when designing my dialogue display.

Here’s my draft dialogue box that’s heavily inspired from pictochat but I made the name box larger and off centre similar to animal crossing. I’ll also have different colours for the different character so it’s clear who’s speaking. I’m tempted to have the white background on the box slightly transparent so it doesn’t obstruct the players view of the game.

Here’s a draft dialogue box for sidekick character ‘3LLA’ (pronounced Ella) as she warns the player of the antagonist’s return and reminds them how to dodge attacks/dangers areas.

Here’s a draft one for K!NG who’s a malfunction buggy robot who acts as the main antagonist. I wasn’t too happy with this as I felt it was a little bland. I decided to go back and use filters such as offset and wave to mess up the text. I also made duplicates and switched off parts of the RGBs to get the shadows behind the first line. I like how the white text stands out against the background. I’ll use this method to create the distorted glitch affect for K!NG’s dialogue.

I’ll be having recorded voice lines playing alongside so I’m not too concerned with it being hard to read as it’s kind of the point with K!NG. None of his dialogue is informative to the player anyway rather it’s just ramblings of a mad robot.

Evaluation of Task 2

I enjoy pre production as it helps me organise my thoughts and ideas on the current task. It allows me time to look at games in the industry and select what I like and don’t like. I looked at games suited towards the same demographic and what I found was bright colours and simple layouts were favoured over more complex menu systems such as something you’d see in a game such as Fallout or Skyrim. 

My biggest inspirations were LittleBigPlanet, Hello Kitty Roller Rescue and Splatoon. Animal crossing was also great when coming up for ideas for my in game dialogue.

Feedback I received from peers was that my idea generation was clear but to think more clearly on interactive elements I could add to my menu. I agree that an interactive element would make my menu system much more interesting. Interaction is also great for keeping the attention of younger audience which my game is aimed towards. In task 3, I’ll build my scene which will act as the backdrop for the menu and see what appropriate interactions I could add. I’m thinking of creating an urban scene to set the scene of the game from the get go. Appropriate interactive elements would be flickering lights or birds sitting on buildings which can be clicked on.

References

Aava, K. (2017). Realistic vs. Stylized: Technique Overview. [online] 80.lv. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/realistic-vs-stylized-technique-overview/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].