One of Everything: February

Habit forming

The thing about being a a culture critic is that you have to actually consume culture. I have found myself without the energy to concentrate on anything after work this month, with only some time on the weekends for RPGs or books. All my other free time has been used up on “being on my phone” and “reading half a substack about politics.”

It’s depressing, honestly! I bounced off Perfect Tides because I was getting frustrated trying to figure out the puzzles, which aren’t even that hard. I just couldn’t do it! Same with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, although I got over that. Booting it up and paying attention to story just feels like too much. Thank God, there’s a new season of Love Is Blind this month so we can all turn our brains off for that.

There would be no entry this month if I had truly done nothing, however, so here’s what I did.

Show

Arcane

There’s a frame in Arcane season 1 that I keep thinking about. In a fight scene, Jayce is holding his hammer and screaming, his face distended, like a figure on a video game ad from the 90s. At the end of this scene, there’s a dead kid. Despite having gotten used to this being a “dark” show, I really didn’t think they’d do it. There’s a jump cut from a badass montage of Jayce fighting mutated robot riders so abstracted you forget they’re human, a montage that I found myself checking my phone during, thinking that maybe I had judged the league of legends show correctly on my first appraisal after all, that it was a Marvel gamer power fantasy that was only now revealing itself.

And then one of the main characters kills a child. And then the show doubles down.

I don’t always love what Arcane does with the stuff it presents to you. The kid, for example, is an example of how callous the drug kingpin is and so, how both sides are bad really. The show as a whole is themed around cycles of violence but, despite pointing repeatedly at how those cycles are founded on imbalance of power, forgets that at crucial moments. It’s a league of legends property, as I said. That alone kept me from watching it for years. But for every time it draws a flat lesson from something, it presents a beautiful sequence that stands totally on its own, often without words. The characters’ faces are also very fun to draw.

That brings me back to that frame. Jayce looks out of control; the show seems like it’s saying, “look how badass this is.” It registered with me because it seemed out of place, but in fact it wasn’t at all; it was a clue to what the scene was about to become. The whole show is great at burying these clues inside itself. Like some kind of giant magic egg. I would describe Arcane as an Okay Show now that I’m done with it, but this kind of thing is what made me like it, or when I didn’t, at least respect it.

Game

Dawnfolk

I downloaded Civ 6 this month to try it again in advance of the sequel coming out, and I remembered I don’t like it at all. I might only like Civ 5, honestly. But then I saw an indie strategy game I had on my wishlist had released, and decided to try it. Dawnfolk is a tile-based game where you have to build buildings to reach resource goals. Sometimes the goals are a puzzle, i.e. “fill the map without destroying a forest tile,” and sometimes they’re just about getting enough materials. It’s very simple with a basic story. It was the only game I had the brain space to play after work this week and there’s a basic demo that goes through the first 2 levels. Just a very easy thing to play.

Reign Breaker (demo)

It’s really unfortunate that a game that’s trying to be Hades is coming out the same year as the sequel to Hades. This is one of those cases where the inspiration is obvious, and the demand for something similar is so high, that I don’t fault Reign Breaker for being derivative of Hades. That’s not just both of them being roguelikes— the combat and also the progression concept is almost exactly the same. Even the background art style, which is my favorite part, is quite similar.

I like the visual design of Reign Breaker, especially the upgrade cards with their detail-from-a-manuscript look. It’s taking from medieval art in an only aesthetic way and honestly I don’t mind that. But the demo doesn’t establish the world or why it’s a techno-medieval vibe, and I really I hope the full game does because that could be such an interesting story. Further, Reign Breaker expects you to have played Hades. Or at least I felt like it did. The combat is difficult enough that someone without experience with Hades combat would struggle with the level of complexity. It has the same one-attack-per-button formula but you can swap those attacks out immediately, and I had trouble keeping track of what input did what. The writing is weaker than Hades, too. So the game is leaning on “this is the formula you love!” while not establishing itself as well as its inspiration— which just makes it look worse by comparison. It came across to me not as more of what I want, but a misunderstanding of what made that thing so good.

Whisper of the House (demo)

Can you tell it was Next Fest? I loved this game. It’s a house-cleaning game with a seeecret mystery but really it’s just an interior decorating game with a LOT of assets. I didn’t know I wanted blueberry shampoo until I saw it in someone’s digital house. The style reminds me of a lot of Flash games I used to play. I find rearranging furniture to be the only fun part of the Sims, and this feels like the first game that could steal their crown in that regard. I’m really excited for the full release.

Book

Psalm for the Wild-Built

I don’t know what it is, but I keep reading books other people love and going “eh.” I listened to this one as an audiobook and I do have trouble following fiction that way, so maybe that contributed to the lukewarm feeling. My biggest issue is that this book is heavily allegorical, and it felt like every conversation was playing into that more than being a naturalistic conversation for its own sake. Every train of thought is a lesson from the solarpunk commune to our current, very non-solarpunk reality. I respect the society this book is trying to convey, and I think I would have liked it more if it were a short film or graphic novel, the descriptions really are beautiful. But the talking in it feels more like the author was looking over her shoulder to see what people would expect to hear the characters say. And the main character’s job is literally talking (well, listening) so, you can see the issue. I’m considering reading the sequel but we’ll see.

Movie

Porco Rosso

Porco Rosso has some amazing backgrounds huh. I especially like the Italian posters in the town and the way the skies are painted. I watched Porco Rosso for maybe obvious reasons this month, but I’m also trying to make my way through the Ghibli movies I never saw and now I think I’ve seen almost all of them. It was nice to watch something with one serious concept about human dignity and bravery that’s extremely low-key otherwise. But it took me forever to get through because I kept pausing to look at the backgrounds and the facial expressions.

Anyway, I think Ghibli movies have the perfect balance between comforting while also requiring you to connect with the world and stating their beliefs. This is what I’m thinking about re: my exhaustion causing me to not want to engage with serious art, and the purpose of art beyond just numbing our daily life. Art should do the opposite of that most of the time.

Comic

I’ve been drawing more recently, and right now I’m practicing drawing shadows. Birdking is a great thing to read right now because its shadows are so DARK. It’s a slow journey through a relatively small area and it is punctuated with brightly colored magic and red guts. Its child main character and her wraith best friend are accustomed to a lot of darkness and violence, but the comic never feels despairing even if its characters get hopeless. It also contains sketches at the back from the making of the comic which is so cool. These volumes taught me a lot about what goes into making a comic. I’m looking forward to Vol 4 when it comes out.

Other

The song “Formidable Enemy!” from Trails from Zero. Ugh, Falcom’s music is so good!