BloOoOgs bloOoOOogs they're better than bad, they're good!
Hello again everyone! It's been a while, hasn't it? Rest assured, contrary to all evidence, I am not, in fact, dead! This is in spite of the semester trying it's darndest to kill me. Well... kind of the semester, perhaps my chronic procrastination and poor planning skills played some role. Regardless, I have slain that beast and now finally have the peace of mind and free time to return to this blog. Hurray!
So aside from getting a whooping by academics, what all have I been up to? Simple! procrastinating lots and lots of research, reading, and writing. You'd think that after a whole semester of exactly those activities I'd be fully burned out on them, but I suppose I am a wee bit mad. Anyhoo, my recent areas of fascination have largely been centered around poetry (particularly the epic poetry of Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser), abstract storytelling on stage a la playwright Sarah Kane, and a concept that I learned about in my anthropological theory class: metamodernism. These ideas have been circling around my noggin for a good while now as I feel they speak rather strongly to my storytelling inclinations. Particularly metamodernism, which I shall elaborate upon later.
I have also been working on perhaps my most ambitious creative endeavor yet: a theater company! Despite my own personal distate for being on stage myself, I am enamoured with the artform as it has a level of immediacy and simultaneous creative freedom and restraint that I have yet to experience in any other. I had been thinking about writing a stage play myself for some time, when my roommate (freshly graduated now) was lamenting about the lack of consistent theater opportunities post grad in our community. Given that most of my friend group are either former or current theater majors (or were just theater kids) I felt that I had the right mix of expertise and people to do something really cool with it. The main challenge to conquer is that simply put people don't really go to see local theater in our town. This is for a variety of reasons (too expensive, too catered to elderly donors who have very different tastes in what is "good," poor marketing, etc.) but the biggest and most daunting is that the traditional theater model does not seem to be sustainable anymore. The historical reliance on donors and grants in a nonprofit space simply fails to keep up with changing media consumption habits and fails to generate enough income (especially with dwindling arts grants and to be frank and a little macabre, donors continously dying off). If we want to succeed we must adapt and innovate.
To innovate is much easier said than done, but I think my ideas for doing so are fairly reasonable (or maybe they're not and in a few months you'll recieve an update saying it crashed and burned- place your bets now). The most important factor is to get around the limited local audience (at least until one can be built up), the simplest way to do this, and the one I will be attempting, is to rely on original productions rather than licenses and to record said original productions professionaly and upload them to a place like YouTube. If one does not have the local audience, simply turn to the digital one. Creative projects such as those by Glitch Productions, Spindlehorse, and an example from the theatrical world, Team StarKid are all examples to follow. The real revenue comes not from ticket sales, but from the merch sales. We'll see if my friends and I are capable of replicating this model. Luckily, I happen to be mostly friends with actors, and people with technical film backgrounds so we have a good selection of talent and experience already.
In other news, I recently watched Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's Project Hail-Mary. Incredibly late to the party, I know, but I felt the need to talk about it regardless. Aside from the obvious stuff (it's phenomenal and deserves every bit of praise it has recieved) I also found it absolutely fascinating on a philosophical level. You see, I find that it fits very squarely within an increasingly common narrative/philosophical mode known as metamodernism. For those who don't know, metamodernism is the cultural response to postmodernism which in turn was a response to modernism. Modernism is its own can of worms that I may get into more thoroughly another time, but for my purposes today I will only briefly explain it. Essentially, the idea of modernism is that there are these grand narratives of reality, that everything can be explained by these narratives, and that these values/narratives are inherently good. Said values typically were: the inevitibility/value of progress, objectivity, the scientific method, and rationality. Now this all sounds fine and dandy, I think most outside of a few particularly nihilistic circles would argue that having values are good, and that rationality, progress, and objectivity are good. However, this all came crashing down in the second half of the twentieth century. Modernism for all its utopian promises of progress and rationality had failed to deliver in many key areas. Bigotry, misogyny, war, and strife were stubbornly persistant, and the cracks and contradictions inherent in society began to show themselves. Many academics began to wonder if modernism was inherently flawed. Perhaps biases inherent in ths system made progress tricky, and maybe objectivity was more difficult than it seemed. Also, who was to say what "rationality" was in the first place? Perhaps we had been looking at things from a singular perspective. Maybe it was best to re-assess things, to re-examine our priors and deconstruct the flawed systems we live under. This thought process led to postmodernism, which is largely the cultural moment we are in now. How does it relate to Project Hail-Mary? Well, while postmodernism was well-intentioned it also led to a radical deconstruction of every part of society, and it could be argued, a very cynical/irony-poisoned view of the world. This led to, in my view, a toxic environment in which nothing means anything, caring is cringe, and any sort of sincerity or optimism was frowned upon. Obviously, this was not the intent of the academics who floated postmodernism around, but it has been the practical result of deconstructing or rather, publically philosophically tearing down absolutely every institution or area of trust in society.
Now what is one to do about all of this? Should we throw it all out the window and return to tradition a la the arguments of conservative "thinkers" like Jordan Peterson? In my opinion, no. I think the answer may be found in metamodernism. Metamodernism in essence takes the often highly valid criticisms proposed by postmodernism and seeks to reconstruct things with them. It oscilates between irony and sincerity rather than being stuck in this ironic cynical deconstructive malaise. Essentially saying: "yes things suck sometimes, and institutions can be biased, but we still have a responsibility to care and belive in a better world." In my view, metamodernism is best described as "radical caring." This brings me back to Project Hail-Mary, a film that to its core rejects cynicsm and believes in sincerity and radical caring. The whole movie is structured around doing your best in bad conditions and continuing to believe in and fight for a better world no matter the circumstances. It, and James Gunn's Superman from last year are to me signs of a shift in society towards a more metamodern mindset. People are exhausted by cynical nihilism and want to believe in things. I, for one, rejoice at the prospect.
Hello again y'all! Once more I am coming at you live from my place of employment because I like to be a rebel (and also because it's dead at the moment and I have nothing better to do). Anyhoo! Earlier this week I had been working on an assignment for one of my English classes, and in the process discovered and re-discovered a number of really fun Newspaper comics. Why am I spending time discussing a dying medium that is mostly enjoyed by geriatric comfort readers who enjoy the shambling zombies of ancient comic strips? because it's my blog, deal with it! some of the earliest memories I have of reading are of me devouring Calvin and Hobbes or Far Side collections. That, and it will allow me to experiment with fancy HTML features like embedded images!
Now that I have succesfully demonstrated the incredible powers of my basic shakey understanding of HTML, I can actually get more into the subject itself. Despite the rather... rough state of the medium in the modern day, it used to be a vibrant art form with a variety of wonderful and highly influential works. I am quite fond of some of the later works in the medium, particularly the previously mentioned (and shown!) Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side- but in the course of my studies I have become enamoured with older works. Things like Frank King's Gasoline Alley, that experimented with long-form storytelling with a shifting status quo (something that hasn't often been replicated in that medium) as well as gorgeous full-page artwork, or even older works like Little Nemo by Winsor McCay or the hillariously titled Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum and Walt McDougall have an absolutely captivating aura to them.
On the opposite end of the timeline, we have the current state of the medium which on first glance appears to be essentially dead. Most comics are re-prints and new strips are very uncommon. The situation is admittedly quite bleak, with ever-decreasing readership, mostly because newspapers don't take the risk with new creators out of a fear of alienating the few elderly folks who still read the paper. It's a bit of a self-enforcing doom spiral. However, I would argue that the medium itself has evolved rather than died. Sure, the situation for comics that appear in print newspapers is bleak, but many would-be cartoonists have instead pivoted to webcomics which are far more vibrant and exciting. Many of the earliest webcomics were digitized comics from University newspapers (Where the Buffalo Roam by Hans Bjordahl being a prominent example), so the shared DNA is very visible. Especially since lots of popular (particularly older) webcomics have the same "gag-a-day" format.
Moving on, another area of recent interest for me has been TTRPGs, particularly those not made by Wizards of the Coast, and especially those that are very strange or unconventional. I had dabbled in some of these before, playing Powered by the Apocalpyse games such as Monster of the Week, Masks, and Apocalypse World (I have discovered that I am not the biggest fan of these for reasons that I may elaborate on in later posts), as well as Dread (a horror game that uses a jenga tower instead of dice that I am quite fond of), but beyond those my experience was quite limited. This all changed when one of my lovely friends re-introduced me to White Wolf Publishing's World of Darkness series of games through a Werwolf: The Apocalypse campaign.
I had been vaguely familiar with the setting, as I had briefly attempted (and failed) to get into Vampire: the Masquerade as a youngin' after having seen folks talk about the old CRPG adaptation, Bloodlines on YouTube but this campaign revived my interest. Like some protagonist in an H.P. Lovecraft story studying an eldritch text that they likely oughtn't, I found myself obsessively reading every scrap I could find on the subject. I should note that this wasn't just reserved for the good games that everyone likes like Werewolf: the Apocalypse or Vampire: the Masquerade, I was reading the more obscure books like Changeling: the Dreaming, Demon: the Fallen, Mummy: the Resurrection, and most importantly for this writing's purposes: Wraith: the Oblivion.
See, something was different about Wraith- something was special. It wasn't the edginess, as all of the games in the series prominently feature their fair share of edge (it comes with the territory of being 1990s RPGs about playing horror monsters), it was something far more interesting than that. You see, Wraith: the Oblivion is sad. Intentionally so- which is something I have never seen before in an RPG (Changeling has some sad aspects as it is about the death of childhood dreams and creativity, but this is on a different level). Unlike the other games where you play cool spooky characters with fun superpowers, in Wraith you play ghosts meandering around the land of the dead trying to move on and avoid getting forged into a tool, weapon, or piece of machinery (which is as insane as it sounds) by a despotic regime. To make matters worse players are also saddled with something called a "shadow," which is the manifestation of their character's worst impulses and darkest desires. Their shadow is portrayed by a different player at the table and will do everything in its power to encourage the players to give in to those impulses. Admittedly, this system while very cool, has many opportunities to backfire if anyone at the table has even an ounce of "that guy™" in them, but if you have the right table, it sounds incredibly cool.
The shadow system is unfortunately emblematic of a lot of Wraith's problems, as it seems to be a game that is super cool and unique, but unless you have a very specific group of players it is downright unplayable. I myself have not played it, and I have yet to meet anyone who has (part of this may have to do with the fact that it is a game from the nineties and I am a wee baby Gen Z, but my point stands). I can only hope that one day I manage to find a group that wants to play it, as despite how depressing it is, it also seems to have the capacity for incredibly emotionally resonant storytelling (like literally conquering your demons, growing as a person, and refusing to give in to the gloom, not to mention how powerful moving on can be as a narrative device).
While it, and the other World of Darkness games, are what have consumed most of my attention, Wraith is not the only game that has caught my interest as of late, as I have been on a bit of a research hole. I have been particularly fond of the extremely weird, niche games found on the depths of itch.io such as the absolutely hillarious Jonathan Frakes Wants Your Attention, And You Must Not Give It To Him by Jeff Stormer or the bizarre adaptation of internet urban legend Saki Sonabashi. Many of these games are not particularly functional, but they often have a surreal abusrdism and raw (frankly traditionally unpublishible) artistic creativity that makes them fascinating. These kinds of games are almost a form of outsider art, and some of them are incredibly personal such as My Brain is a Stick of Butter by Adam Bell, which is about struggling with ADHD (something I myself am intimately familiar with).
All of these games are quite inspiring, perhaps if I ever have the time I'll make my own...
Hello once again! Despite the bitter cold and last week's ice, I have yet to perish! As such, I have returned to ramble more about stuff and things. Unfortunately I underestimated the amount of effort setting up various parts of this website would take, so that is still incomplete for now. That being said, I have been soldiering away at it in my brief windows of free time in-between readings for my classes. I won't be foolish enough to give an estimation for when the other parts are done so I'll go with the age old method and say soon™. Likewise with various writings, which have funnily enough been delayed to make way for other, more academic writings. I am quite excited about them though, and if I can get permission from my professors (don't want to be accused of academic dishonesty or self-plagiarism) I will probably post them here.
Moving on from the more granular update stuff, I have recently become absolutely fascinated by the subject of children's horror games. That is to say, video games that while being horror, are targeted towards a younger audience or at the very least are tame enough that they can be enjoyed by younger people. This genre used to be quite uncommon, but due to the rise of games like Five Nights at Freddy's, Baldi's Basics, Poppy Playtime, and other "mascot horror" (which is itself a wild rabbit hole), the genre has been dragged from obscurity into the mainstream.
The first time I came across something in the genre was when I watched Markiplier's 2014 playthrough of Among the Sleep, which for the sake of my own sanity, I will be choosing to ignore is now nearly twelve years old. I was eleven years old at the time, and was not the biggest fan of horror, but something about curling up under my blankets with my iPod touch far past my bedtime (sorry, Mom and Dad) and watching Mark's humorous and exaggerated reactions to the the dangerous colorful and dreamy toybox-like world of the game was captivating. Thinking back on it, I assume that my interest in the horror genre was sparked by this game (as well as the darker parts of Invader Zim and Tim Burton's works). It was able to provide a safe and tame way for me to engage with a genre that I had previously shied away from, being a sort of "baby's first horror" if you will, and for this, I am eternally grateful as horror is one of my most favored mediums to engage with creatively.
As I had previously mentioned, this genre while once niche (in gaming, at least- it was far more common in books, tv and film) has since become mainstream. All one has to do is look at any children's or toy sections of pretty much any store to find FNaF merch, and other games (particularly Poppy Playtime) have reached similar heights. While part of me is thrilled that such a previously niche genre has finally recieved its flowers, I am also lightly miffed with the quality of some of these games, particularly in the narrative department. Some are better than others, but buy-and-large most of these games can only be described as "slop" (a term I generally dislike, but I feel like it's apt in this scenario). They are often poorly constructed, focusing almost entirely on clickbait-y jumpscares, while having poor gameplay and often downright infantile writing.
This may seem counter-intuitive, as these are works designed for children, but I feel that we ought to have more respect for them. Kids may not know as much as adults, but they aren't stupid, and if everything we make for them is low quality slop, we will be doing them a disservice. Children deserve high quality content, especially in the horror genre, as it is a safe space for them to explore the darker side of the world. Video games are wonderful for this exploration, as they put children in the shoes of the characters in dangerous/dark situations, and beyond that, horror can be an absolutely wonderful vehicle for metaphor and symbolism. The previously mentioned Among the Sleep is a fantastic example of one such game, as it explores themes that are dark, but familiar/understandable to younger audiences through the lense of childhood abstraction. The twisted wonderland of the game's world is highly symbolic, with everything from the anthropomorphic talking teddy bear that accompanies you, to the aesthetics and puzzles often having a secondary meaning. Contrast this with Baldi's Basics, a game that seems to not have much of a narrative and instead rely on provoking overly-jumpy YouTubers and easily frightened children. One could argue that perhaps it is some form of commentary on the spotty American public education system, but not much effort is made to create anything particularly engaging.
I suppose this can all be explained by the simple fact that where there is money, there will be low-effort slop chasing that success, but I implore game devs to put more effort into these things.
In entirely unrelated news, I have begun the process of setting up this year's garden! I am often late to start and I wanted to avoid that this year, so I have begun starting the plants indoors that need to be started, particularly the onions, herbs like parsely and thyme, and the peppers (this year I'm going with Bell Peppers and Jalapeño). Next week I hope to start the tomatoes, lettuce, and possibly Maypops (although that plant supposedly spreads at an insane rate and has been known to burrow under concrete so if I grow that fruit, it will be strictly in containers).
The Current Garden Plan:
I am very excited, as gardening is one of my favorite pasttimes. Something about being out there in the sun, putting effort into growing my own food is highly appealing to me. The whole process scratches my brain in the best of ways, because it is a process that results in you being able to literally eat the fruits of your labor, not to mention I quite like the smell of soil. My only problem with the whole experience is that I often get too excited and go overboard (case in point: I currently have run out of window sill space for my starter plants and am considering converting a closet into a grow room with my UV grow lamp). Regardless, the whole shebang is incredibly rewarding and I will probably update y'all fairly frequently on the subject.
While logging in the other day I noticed that this website officially has two, that's right two followers! A fact that I find unreasonably exciting. To the two of you that are choosing to read my semi-coherent ramblings on this poorly programmed website, I am immensely grateful. Y'all have given me more motivation to continue to write and to learn CSS and HTML.
Hello again, y'all! Guess I have enough motivation to keep up with this blog thing after all! Well, that and I am currently sitting at my place of employment twiddling my thumbs because the poor weather conditions have deterred most of our would-be patrons from scheduling for today. This isn't exactly suprising, after all, most institutions in town have closed for the day. Keyword being most. For reasons I can't begin to fathom, the only, and I mean only university in town that remains open happens to be the one I attend and find myself employed by. As I implied earlier, this morning the roads were not really in a state to support this. Most of the side-roads (including the street I live on) and roads outside of town were still in a rough condition. Understandably, the reaction from the student body was... negative. Hillariously, even the university newspaper featured an opinion article bashing the decision.
It isn't all bad, the relatively quiet campus is nice and missing today's shift would have been rough on my coffers. Not to mention, I have the time to sit down and procrastinate write for this here blog!
Moving on from whinging about personal inconveniences, I have also been recently attempting to scale the increasingly mountainous pile that is my backlog. As any astute reader could guess from both the title of this very website, as well as my general disposition (that being an ADHD-riddled mess) this will be no easy task. It is, however, a task that I am determined to complete.
Perhaps writing about my attempts will help me better organize my efforts. Maybe I'll make it an ongoing segment of these blog posts... Regardless, there have been a few new entries to my backlog courtesy of my professors:
Oh the joys of studying English and Anthropology simultaneously. Lots and lots of reading, which can be a little overwhelming if you're a slow reader such as myself. Luckily, I am somewhat spared from the onslaught by the fact that many of these are for children (I am taking a class about writing for children and young adults) and as a result will be a breeze to read, and I have read a few of these before, particularly Maus, Nimona, Barefoot Gen, and Howl's Moving Castle so those will be more review than anything else. I am also excited to finally patch some holes in my cultural knowledge, as despite being a member of Generation Z, I have somehow managed to avoid reading The Hunger Games. This will sadly put some of my currently in-progress readings on hold (sorry Miss Peregrine and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell among many others), but needs must when attempting to preserve one's adequate GPA. It will also likely put my gaming backlog on hold, alas. Thankfully Sandfall Interactive was so kind as to include a built-in "what was I doing again?" button so I shan't be too lost when I finally have enough time to return to Expedition 33.
On top of trying to wrangle my backlog, I have also been slowly chipping away at different parts of this site, I expect by the end of the week or early next I should have a semi-functional "favorites" page which will be pretty much what it says on the tin, a place for me to document my favorite books, shows, movies, games, etc. I will also hopefully have some of my writing ready for the writing page.
That's all for today, catch you again soon!
Hello? Is this thing on? Oh good, it looks like things are functioning and I haven't yet completely broken things with my extremely limited knowledge of HTML and my complete lack of anything resembling competence with CSS.
Anyway, I suppose I ought to start with some sort of introduction. Hello! My name is Jacob and as this rather uncreatively titled page suggests, this is my blog! This, alongside the website in general, is a bit of a personal project of mine. The state of social media and the internet at-large has been downright dreadful. Things like the sea of AI slop proliferating in recent years and algorithims that discourage thoughtful discussion and encourage rage-bait have ruined the experience. I am hoping that this website can be my little way of rebelling against the current state of online spaces. A small slice of the internet that I can call my own and use to document my life free from the corporate web.
As I've already stated, my name is Jacob. I am an anthropology student in my seventh year of undergrad, a feat possible due to academic shenanigans and chronic lack of decisiveness (you know how it is). Apart from anthropology, I am also studying English. Speaking of which, one of the goals of this website is to have a single place to document all of my writing so expect some of that down the line as well. I will also likely rant about my interests, as one does on a blog, so if you're interested in literature, horror, gardening, cooking, science fiction, fantasy, folklore, and much more™ you're in luck!
So yeah, that's about it for this first post. If I don't manage to spectacularly break anything with my terrible programming, I will see y'all in the next post!