Life in plastic, It's fantastic!

BARBIE: THE MOTION PICTURE

I went last night to see Barbie with my girlfriend. I left the theatre with an overall positive feeling on the movie, but a few niggling little things I wanted to talk about and the knowledge that there is very little opportunity where a nearly 30 year old man can talk at length about a Barbie movie. As such, I will be whinging into this void.

I. I AM KENOUGH

The movie is immaculately cast. Margot Robbie kills it in the titular role, and Ryan 'The Goose' Gosling likewise steals the spotlight so hard he should be up on charges. All the other Barbies and Kens are a joy to watch, effortlessly inhabiting the pastel shaded technicolour Barbieland and filling it with campy life. The sets are spectacular, perfectly realizing Barbieland as a full-size set of dreamhouse toy sets and doll asscessories. The transition to 'real world' California is hilariously executed and locations like the cartoonish Mattel headquarters do wonders to keep the viewer in a hightened sense of reality throughout. The movie had me continuously laughing throughout, to the point where I started stifling myself as I felt my guffaws might be distracting other viewers. The comedy, I'm saying, was very well done.

To expound upon the notion that Gosling's Ken steals the spotlight, It is established in the first act that Ken exists purely to attempt and garner Barbie's attention, vying for it with the other Kens (particularly one played by Simu Liu), to the polite acknowledgement and general disinterest of Robbie's Barbie. When Barbie rebukes Ken's request to stay the night at the Dreamhouse, going inside to hang out with her friends, Ken stares after her longingly, whispering to himself "I love you too". A clever spin on the secondary nature of Ken as an accessory doll to Barbie that most girl's (in my experience growing up having had a sister etc etc) don't really care about, presenting an undercurrent of unrequired affection and heartbreak. This is the seminal moment for Ken moving forward. When Barbie awakes to discover her natural tip-toe standing feet have gone flat, she is directed to the real world to set things right, Gosling's Ken tags along, lovesick and desperate to spent time with her.

Barbie finds the real world distressingly bleak, which serves to exasperate her growing existential crisis. The only highlight being an interaction she has with a grand-matronly looking woman, remarking how 'beautiful' the stranger is. She seeks out who she believes to be the owner of her real world doll counterpart, a pre-teen named Sasha. Approaching Sasha, bubbly and optimistic, hoping to lift the girl's spirit, Barbie is assaulted with typical eighth grade angst, getting read down to the lowest. Barbie runs off crying, and sits on a bus bench reflecting on the cruelty of being called a fasciast. While in Barbieland, Robbie displays fantastic comedic chops, and these depressing real world run ins allow her remit to give Barbie depth.
While Barbie is attempting to make right with Sasha, Ken finds that people generally acknowledge him, engaging in niceities, and that in the real world, there are dudes doing stuff- complete opposite to Barbieland. He enters Sasha's school's library, grabs some books about 'patriarchy' and ends up returning to Barbieland, while Barbie herself gets wrapped up in a situation at the Mattel headquarters.
Come to discover, Sasha was not the one playing with Barbie, it was her mother, Gloria. The revelation of such was masterfully done and a genuinely heart wrenching moment in my opinion. After giving Mattel the slip, Barbie takes Sasha and Gloria back to Barbieland with the intention of showing them both her utopian life. Upon arriving back, Barbie discovers to her shock and horror that Barbieland is now 'Kendom', Gosling's Ken having lead a revolution with the other Kens to take over Barbieland, their heads filled with notions of masculine superiority from Ken's time in the real world. Barbie and her human compatriates must unite the Barbies again to take back their home and remind Ken whose doll line this is supposed to be anyway!

This entire journey serves as a character arc for Ken. He is head over heels in love with Barbie, but she doesn't care. He overcompensates for this by first showering her in endless affection, and when that doesn't work, he overcompensates in the other direction by establishing the Kendom of surface level exaggerated masculinity. When the Barbies do manage to rise up by pitting the Kens against one another and retake Barbieland, he breaks down in tears at Barbie's feet, once again begging for her affection. She lets him down once more, and talks him into the revelation that he is a person of his own and doesn't need Barbie's love to have worth. It's a nice message at the end and despite Ken acting as the antagonist for the better part of the movie, I never perceieved him to be a villain per say because the entire thing was hilarious, and his motivation is clear from start to the very end.

II. DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT DEATH?

Now having presented the plot from Ken's perspective, let's bring it back to our protagonist. This is where I begin to have some issues with the story. First, just to reitterate, Margot Robbie is fantastic. I have not one complaint about her portrayal of Barbie, I believe she was perfectly cast and delivers a spectacular performance. The thing is, despite the inciting incident of the movie being her feet going flat, her being the reason she and Ken visit reality, her having to find purpose and set things right- she doesn't get what I would consider to be a satisfying resolution to her conflict. At the onset of our story, Barbie begins getting intrusive thoughts about dying, which leads her to an existential crisis about her nature as a person, which is made worse by her time in reality. Seeking to win over Sasha only breaks her spirit more, and while finding Gloria to be the one she was actually looking for, Gloria's impassioned speech about how hard it is to be a woman in modern society doesn't really help Barbie settle her mind. Instead, Barbie meets her creator (more on this in a moment), ascends to a limbo state, and is made human for the film's resolution.

Perhaps I'm in the minority here but I did not see how this was supposed to provide closure? Rather than accept that she could still be Barbie despite self doubt and worry, Barbie must forever after leave her Barbieland utopia and join the real world which was, to her experience hithertonow, awful in every respect. During the aftermath of the final showdown between Barbie and Ken, Gloria tells the CEO of Mattel they should sell a 'Normal Barbie', who wears sweatpants and eats Starburst candies until their jaw hurts. The CEO, upon being informed by a lackee that such a product would sell, concurs! Why then can Robbie's Barbie not be that Normal Barbie? Ken got to learn his lesson and grow as a person. Barbie gets to be sad and then visit a gynecologist.

The introduction of Ruth Handler as a character is done first in the Mattel headquarters. Barbie, fleeing from the corporate board members, finds herself in a homely kitchen where an elderly woman offers her a cup of tea. They sit in silence, exchanging few words, before Barbie is off again seeking her escape. The scene, in my opinion, suffers from poor pacing. A couple of extended shots where they sit looking at one another, could have very easily have been trimmed a few seconds and been flawless. I liked this interaction as a subtle way to pay respect to the origins of the doll line. However, Ruth returns in the aforementioned Ken aftermath as a God like individual who then grants Barbie humanity. The issue I have with this resolution is twofold. Firstly, Ruth very bluntly states who she is, her position as Barbie's creator, and that Barbie is named after her daughter. I understand that a young viewer would probably need explanation of who Ruth Handler was, but it felt very ham fisted. Secondly, it is never established throughout the movie that Barbie wishes to become human, only that she wants to return to her life in Barbieland after rectifying her flat feet and calming her mind of existential dread. This could have worked if some foundation had been laid throughout her adventure, but it feels every bit the deus ex machina that it is presented as.

III. I CAN'T EVEN BEACH HERE

Clearly, this movie was not made for me, and that's a big part of why I'm not bothering to attempt commentary on the femenist messaging throughout the picture. I don't know how it's been received generally, I don't know what the grander implications are towards society or the Barbie brand for that matter. I can say, I found it ham fisted at times, but I also wasn't expecting anything less. I do find it kind of ironic that part of Ken's new post-reality personality is an infatuation with horses, which could have been written as a common interest for him to share with Barbie who, as long as I've ever been aware of Barbie, likes horses.

In conclusion: It's a gorgeously shot, well acted, very funny movie with a bit of a slapdash ending. Would recommend.

Dive into the endless handbag known as your imagination

The Clock Crew: A Tale of Horsethieves and SWFs

I. PRETEXT

Cast your mind back to the year 2000. The twin towers are still definatly penetrating the New York City skyline like dual middle fingers angled toward God, Y2K turned out to be a resounding bust, and with the power of a landline telephone cable, your family's Windows 95 personal computer could link up to the newfangled "Information Super Highway". Blisteringly fast 56 kilobytes per second connectivity meant a seemingly limitless amount of information was a single URL away, providing you knew a URL to visit. Practically archiac to the modern sensabilities, it was a landscape where writing ruled the roost and video files, if they were to be seen at all, were small, short, compressed to within an inch of their life, and would take ages to download. It was the time of Shockwave and Flash. Originally conceived as a means to produce interactive webpage elements like buttons and menus, the creatively inclined had taken to utilizing the vector based art suite to produce animations and games that could load in your browser relatively quickly. From big industry names like Chuck Jones, to basement dwelling preteens, a new landscape of art was blossoming on-line. If you had a few hundred dollars, or the ethical flexability of a privateer, to aquire Macromedia's software, you could create your own work, and embed it as a .SWF file to a webpage.

II. NEO GEO

To very briefly summarize it's origin, Newgrounds.com was launched in 1995 as a personal page for one Tom Fulp, a teenager from Philadelphia, to share his own creative endevours. Eventually he took to hosting works from friends, and then cartoons and games emailed to him from visitors to the site. This gallery of works was contained in what Tom called 'The Portal', initially a page with a rotating portal graphic that, when clicked, would take you a random page. In 2000, NG launched the 'Automated Portal', the very first of it's kind on the internet, where site visitors could register as a user, upload their own SWFs, and have it added to the ever expanding list of content available on the site. Predating the likes of YouTube by 5-6 years, it's hard to overstate how monumental a paradigm shift this signaled for the internet. For a more detailed account from Mr.Fulp himself, check out the History page on Newgrounds. Grander implications aside, place yourself mentally in this time and place. Now imagine you're, like, 12-15 years old.

III. AUGUST, 2001

Teens with anonyimity in 2001 were as prone to respectful behaviour as teens with anonyimity in 2023 are. Which is to say, not at all. One could possibly argue that the notion of 'trolling' was more novel and unique twenty two years ago than it is today, but do not forget that then as now, the internet is very serious business, and for every person proud of their epic Mario does mushrooms animation, there's another who's greatest joy in life is derived from annoying them. Enter Adam. Adam was a 13 year old Newgrounds user with the alias of 'CoolBoyMan'. He created an Alt account to post the lowest possible quality content to the Newgrounds portal for the purposes of irritating the userbase at large. The name he chose for that account was 'StrawberryClock', derived from the late 60s rock/pop band Strawberry Alarm Clock. It was, by all measure, a success insofar as the "animations" he posted garnered many angry reviews before being removed from the Portal via the user rating system, scoring less than the required threshold to remain on the platform. All that changed when in August 2001, Adam created and submitted "B". A single frame containing an off-centre, red, Times New Roman, capitalized letter B. Miraculously, "B" survived the judgement period and squeaked its way into the portal proper. This did not go unnoticed, and the userbase reviled it, voting it down, lowering the score such that it received the (no longer recognized) Turd of the Week award for worst submission of the past week. Many more angry comments flooded the submission, but something Adam could never have expected occurred. Someone else got the joke.

Another user, styling themselves 'OrangeClock', appeared and began proclaiming the genius of "B", touting it as an artistic achievement, a revolutionary piece, and it's creator, Strawberry, as the greatest artist in history. Hilarious. So hilarious, in fact, that others would follow suit.

"B", by StrawberryClock. August 15th, 2001

IV. Hail to the King, Baby

Orange was a prolific poster on Newground's BBS system, bringing awareness of Strawberry's greatness to a higher profile, and seriously pissing off a large percentage of the userbase. He would, himself, submit Flash to the portal of an intentially low quality to stoke this fire, and would influence some other's to do the same. This initial influx of Clocks to Newgrounds all styled themselves similarly; RaspberryClock, AppleClock, PineappleClock, KnottsberryClock, CarrotClock, RadishClock, etc there was suddenly an entire community forming naturally around the joke. All from that single red letter. Orange and Raspberry were relatively talented artists at this time and represented themselves and the other clocks in Flash with literal fruit adorned with clocks for faces, voiced with text to speech robotic voices, in a somewhat meta-fictional world. Co-opting what is an automatically awarded position for the user who created the highest quantity of highest rated content on the site for the last month, it became common parlance for the Clocks to proclaim StrawberryClock 'King of the Portal', and speak of him in the reverential tone of an actual monarch.

"Enter Strawberry Clock", by OrangeClock. September 26th, 2001

A principal tenant of being a "Clock" on Newgrounds was to vote '5' on the creative work of other Clocks, based on that initial central joke of thinking the works of Strawberry were masterpieces, pumping up the user rating scores of Clock Flash, saving it from being deleted, and irritating the more earnest members of the userbase at large. This was hugely alluring to some Newgrounders of a similar comedic mind, or those who wished to get their own work onto the site but lacked the creative spark or skill to produce things that would withstand the critical ratings of viewers on their own. The rapid growth of the Clock movement lead to a newspost by Tom Fulp addressing the situation on September 8th, 2001, less than a full month after "B" was submitted.

V. FIFEN

It is important to remember at this stage that the people being referenced here, at this time, are overwhelmingly young teens. The proverbial ball was now well and truly rolling for the Clocks and while the laughs were being had and shits were being posted, time was passing and as days became months and months became years, more and more people were joining in on what was now a phenomenon of a trend, and a growing contingent of these new Clocks were, more or less, taking the bit seriously. There was still a tongue pressed firmly into the cheek tonally, but some were taking the meta-fictional setting established in the early non-Strawberry Clock flash and fleshing it out into a shared universe where the Clock characters reside. Perhaps it was the humour innate to approaching something nonsensical with sincerity, perhaps some felt they had something to prove, or maybe the low bar for entry and pre-established audience made for an obvious route to notoriety for someone with the skill to rise above the typical fare. Regardless, a big shake up was coming to what was now known as the Clock Crew. An early example of this paradigm shift is Blue Clock's 'The Void' from November of 2002, which won the coveted 'Daily First' award as highest rated submission of the day.

While founding members like Orange and Raspberry began producing Flash of a more genuine quality, new users like Blue, Strange, Crust, Turd, and more were contributing what was more than simply 'good', but actually notable as exemplary of what Flash animation was capable of.

VI. COMMUNITY, SCHISM, GROWTH, & INNOVATION

It was beginning to reach a point where there were dozens if not hundreds of active Clock users on Newgrounds at any given time and as early as 2002, a separate community hub had been established for Clocks on their own website. As with any amalgam of young, passionate, creative types with strong ideas and a perchant for edgy humour, there was drama. With the growing chasm between the spam centric rebellious shit disturbers angling to irritate the Newgrounds populous, and those who were taken to creating actual art with the Clock aesthetic and world as a springboard, it was inevitable. A consequence of this consistent drama was a distancing of original members from the group over time, but where influential figures stepped away, there were bright eyed and ambitious others to take the place. Moreover, Newgrounds itself was ballooning in activity, hundreds of new submissions rolling in a day, thousands of active users at any given time. The sheer scale of the thing was getting out of hand, and a straw would eventually break the camels back. But as with the hydra, one lopped head would spawn two more.

Users banned from the Clock community would take it unto themselves to create so-called "Spin off groups". Largely cults of personality, established around a central figure nailing themselves to a cross, these knock-offs would shamelessly ape the aesthetic style of the Clock Crew, taking the established idea of an inanimate object with a clock for a face, and replacing the clock with another symbol. The first, and most notable, of these derivatives was The Lock Legion who replaced the Clock with a keyhole. These groups would then unvaryingly proclaim their superiority over both the Clock Crew, and Newgrounds as a whole. By 2006, there would be dozens of groups based on this model. Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, no? It was indisputable the influence that Clocks were having on the Newgrounds landscape. It became tradition, from 2002 on, that every August 15th would be "Clock Day", celebrating the anniversary of StrawberryClock's "B" and the "Birth" of the Clock Crew. It was the first annual themed event on Newgrounds, still acknowledged to this day, and the impetus for many others formed by the Newgrounds team like "Robot day", "Madness Day", "Pixel Day", "Pico Day", etc

While countless Clock flash were submitted to Newgrounds, year round, on Clock Day it was expected that every Clock submit something. Encouraged to show one's artistic skill to their fullest ability, it was in no way enforced, so long as you posted something, every Clock would vote your flash through judgement, and by the 5th Clock Day, Newgrounds was absolutely dominated- not just by the real Clocks, but also general users who sought to capitalize on the festivities, bolstering their account statistics, and getting flash onto the site when they otherwise wouldn't. One could argue that both Newgrounds and The Clock Crew saw thier peak popularity around 2007, the year I joined. Internet connectivity was becoming more common, as well as more convenient with high speed DSL availability, and competition like YouTube only just rearing its head.

As stated, 2007 was when I joined the Clock Crew, so I can shed light personally into the goings on of the time, with the caveat that I was myself a young teen, and that I'm recounting from 16 years ago so details can be hazy. The head administrator of the Clock Crew at that point was LeekClock, a creative and ambitious sort, who saught to bolster the Clock Crew as a legitimate artistic movement. During his tenure, ClockCrew.cc was the central forum and hub for the community, and under his guidance some massive multimedia projects were produced, like the 2006 music album stopAllSounds(); (name derived from the Actionscript command to silence all audio playing in the timeline of a SWF) which saw a physical self published release. Unironically an exciting junction for those who saught to be part of a creative movement. Community members were rewarded with recognition and real world prizes for outstanding work as Clocks, and it seemed as though the sky was the limit.

VII. ELITISM, STAGNATION, A CHANGING LANDSCAPE

Nostalgia and perspective are factors not to be discounted, because even at this seeming peak of popularity, there was a notion from prominent users that the Clock Crew was already past it's prime. The difference between a 13 year old and an 18 year old is fairly massive, and many of those initial Clocks had aged out of the community, not invested in the direction it had taken, or no longer interested in making Flash themed around robotically voiced fruit. Those who had stuck around from the beginning to that point were now older, and the attitude that had them antagonizing other Newgrounders years ago fostered a cynicism and irritation at newer Clocks who were themselves kids as those older Clocks once had been. A culture of gatekeeping and antagonism became deeply intrenched in the fabric of the Clock Crew, leading to newer users feeling ostracized and often times joining into the aforementioned knock-off groups where median user ages were lower, and standards of behaviour were altogether different.

At the onset of the 2010s, streaming video had blown up, taking prominence over Flash as a creative medium (although at Youtube's onset, the Flash Player extension was required to run page embeded videos), and there was something of a gold rush when Google introduced adsense as a means of making money from your content. Animation was still huge, but slowly, young teens were getting their hands on digital cameras and creating videos with Windows' packed in 'Movie Maker' software, where the barrier for entry was astronomically lower than the tedius and taxing process of animating cartoons and programming games. You do not need to be able to draw to record a video. You don't even need to engage in rudementary editing to upload a video. Moreover, Newgrounds nature as a home for the creative works of its userbase, and judgement system curating what does or does not make its way onto the site, inherently prevents the site from becoming a repository for pirated content like television clips or mainstream music, not even to touch on things like video game footage. The very nature of internet media was undergoing a paradigm shift, and Newgrounds as a platform was struggling to keep up, being an independantly owned and operated business that functioned on a relatively low income from advertising.

Then came smartphones. Tablet devices fundementally changed the way people connected to the internet, due in no small part to Apple announcing that (now owned by Adobe) Flash would NOT be supported by their operating systems. This was, with no exaggeration, a nail in Newgrounds' coffin, and a blow to the longevity of the Clock Crew's relevance in years to come. It took until 2013 and the release of Swivel, a program sponsored by Newgrounds, which allowed for the easy conversion of Flash .swf files to 1080p high definition .Mp4 video, for Newgrounds to have a tool to fight against the new dynamic of internet media. Unfortunately, it also fueled a not insignificant amount of the animation community to take their work to YouTube in search of the almighty adsense dollar. The most staggering effect of this new internet landscape to The Clock Crew was that with the aforementioned ease of creation of video content as opposed to art and animation, and with the considerably larger audience for that video content, the influx of new users to Newgrounds, and by extension The Clock Crew, slowed from a torrent to a trickle. With less and less fresh blood coming into the community, the aging members producing less, as each year gave way to the next, the niche cultural relevance of The Clock Crew became more and more meager.

VIII. WHAT OF IT, THEN

Despite all this, The Clock Crew persists. The communal forum still exists with some dedicated users, though increasingly regarded as an archive to be preserved while IRC chat takes prominence via an active Discord channel, there remain extremely talented artists who produce Clock cartoons and art, collaborating together each year for Clock Day to produce remarkable, irreverant works in the established Clock mold. I will end with a selection of exemplary works from Clocks past and present, to give you a real taste of what The Clock Crew is beyond what the written word can provide;

"StrawberryClock V", by OrangeClock. September 2nd, 2001

"The Portal is Not Enough", by KnottsberryClock. February 22nd, 2002

"The Void I", by BlueClock. November 23rd, 2002

"The Void II", by BlueClock. February 13th, 2003

"Lord of the Clocks pt. 1" by StrangeClock. August 15th, 2005 (Part 1), August 15th, 2006 (Part 2)

"Symphony", by ToadClock. December 24th, 2007

"A Short Flash about Clams", by ZombieLincoln. August 16th, 2008

"FRUIT", by Munglai. August 15th, 2009

"Resistance is Futile", by CorpsegrinderClock. August 15th, 2011

"Hulk Hogan's Epic Clock Fest 2014 - Rise of the Poop or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Cocaine", a collaborative effort. August 15th, 2014

"Flounderman Robs a 7-11", by FloundermanClock. February 4th, 2020

"ThorClock Takes Over", by ThorClock. February, 2020


StrawberryClock is the King of the Portal. Everyone loves StrawberryClock. Vote Five.

Alone and Forsaken, by Fate and by Man

HBO's adaptation of The Last of Us has been a cultral touchstone for a couple months, on the tip of tongues in lunchrooms, a subject of conversation across social media, with critical acclaim comporable to the adjulation heaped upon the souce game back in 2013. I enjoyed it, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have greviances. To qualify all statements following, I think the show is good. Great, even. A triumph in the endevour of adapting video game to motion picture- although, not the first such example despite what many clickbaiting thinkpieces would have you believe. My issues basically boil down to a handful of points; a disregard of action, additions made beyond the source material, truncation of the story, and a spoon feeding of interpretation to the audience. As such, I will address each individually. There is an amount of overlap between, but I'll weave it together somehow, just give me a minute.

There will be spoilers, by the by. It's been a minute, you've had time to see it.

I. WHERE HAVE ALL THE GUNS GONE?

The Last of Us is an action game. An action game with stealth sequences and a heavy narrative focus, but an action game at it's core. HBO's adaptation nails the story, with excellent performances from The Mandalorian and Lyanna Mormont, but despite it's lofty themes and the mature subject matter handled in the 9 episode run, it delivers a decidedly PG-13 level of combat. Executions, upon rare instances of their occurance, are delivered out of frame or with a quick cut away. The fungal zombies ("infected", if you will), established well in the first two episodes as the primary threat of the world and cause of the apocalypse we are taken along into, could charitably be described as recurring guest stars, the only real large scale encounter with them occuring toward the end of episode 5. From then on out, if an infected is shown, it is alone, and more often than not, in a flashback sequence. For the most part, this can be chalked up to budget restraints that play a considerable deciding role in a live action programme in stark opposition to a video game, but without their presence felt, this may as well have been taking place in a post-nuclear world for all the impact they have. At the onset of our journey, after giving us some world-building backstory, our antagonist, Joel, is made out to be a bit of a hard edged killer. Capable, and deadly. By the end of episode 8, we've had as many big shoot-outs as we've had episodes with Joel on his back bleeding out. There is something to be said for how repetitive it would be to put every action sequence of the game 1:1 onto the screen, and that the central drama of Joel and Ellie's journey should be the focus, as it was, but it leaves me feeling wanting for a scene with a shrapnel grenade made out of that Beefaroni can.

II. CUTTING MEANS SHIPPING

Leading directly off the previous point, there is only so much one can fit inside a 9 episode miniseries, so the discussion must be had on the creative level to decide what makes the cut and what does not. The story of the game has, more or less, made it to the screen unmolested but lacking space to breathe. I've come to accept the days of 26 episode seasons are dead and buried, but even an extra hour dedicated to the journey would have made the destination more poignent. The finale, I feel, is a perfect encapsulation of this problem. Every story beat is hit and rattled through in a quick and clean 40 odd minutes. This is made extra frustrating with episode 3 being an entirely tangental (sweet and poetic, but tangental) love story, and episode 7 serving as an adaptation of the Left Behind DLC for original game. Episode 7 being more excusable as a backstory episode for Ellie, as episode 1 was a backstory episode for Joel, but out of a 9 hour run, you're left with precious little of our duo's cross country escapades.

III: GONE TOO FAR, IN A COUPLE OF PLACES

I'm going to cut the shit here and be direct. The finale really pissed me off. Twice. These instances are what I'm directly referring to in 'non source material additions' and 'interpretation spoon feeding'. First off, the opening sequence to the finale showing Ellie's birth. Totally unnecessary, takes screen time away from the hospital sequence, and cheapens Ellie's character by completely demystifying her immunity. Bullshit. Should not have been written, filmed, or included in the final cut. Get rid of it. Second, the entirity of the hospital shootout was horrible, and it falls entirely on how it was shot and edited together. The slow motion, the extreme closeups, the melodramatic music, and aforementioned PG-13 violence, spells out plainly to the viewing audience a message that this is bad, Joel is in the wrong. Personal opinion nonwithstanding, I'm not even saying he isn't, but as an action sequence in-game, you as the player are the one gunning down the Fireflies, and are therefore put upon to weigh the morality of Joel's actions. In presenting it as they did, the show is leading the viewer to draw a specific conclusion. To reiterate once again, The Last of Us is an action game. There is no catharsis in slow motion footage of cartridge shells bouncing off a tile floor. I don't know if the showrunners thought it would have been gratuitous, or what, but I felt robbed of a true rendition of the climactic gameplay moments.

That's it, that's all I've got. Guess I didn't have as much to say about it as I thought I did.

Ticking away the moments that make up the dull day

There is a trend, in what I suppose I would call the 'new media' landscape, of beginning a sentence with the word "So". Be it Youtube, Reddit, TikTok, Twitter, or wheresoever one might be inclined upon spewing what constitutes a thought into the preceptive field of another. Why is that? Verbal crutch? An implication of casuality as to preemptively defend oneself from appearing to give a squirt of piss, lest they be challenged? Or is it a signifier of sheepishness? Lacking the confidence to jump directly into the thrust of an idea? I don't know where I'm going with this, but it's the sort of thing you begin to notice and will bother you for the rest of your life.

Anywho. Been a minute, eh?

Once upon a time, there was more than one post on this blog. Can't for the life of me remember how many, but I know for certain there was an embarassingly poorly written review of Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition from when that came out. I also can't really remember when I decided to glass the entire thing. Probably for the best. I don't intend to spend any amount of time waxing poetic about what's come between 2011 and now in my life, other than to say I had an inspiration to write, thought about posting it on Tumblr, thought better of it, remembered that I had a blogspot account, tried going to Blogspot, was redirected to Google, and had a hell of a time figuring out how to find my way back to this damn thing. But I'm here now, and I put a new banner up. Good lord, look at this old one;

Terrible indeed. Just a bunch of shit I thought was cool slapped around Impact font text. I had a motif going with the multicoloured D20's between a couple different pages I was running at the time, which I only remember because the Tumblr I use as a depository for my art still has one of them. Look at me, said I wasn't going to wax poetic and then went right to it. Moving on.

THE THING I WANTED TO WRITE ABOUT:

Illustration titled "The Commander Keens", originally found on DeviantART, is a band logo from untold years ago and cannot relocate the source of. Sincere apologies to the artist.

Back in 2019, Bethesda Softworks, riding high off the success of DOOM 4, and the rebooted Wolfenstein series, announced a new Commander Keen. Shock and awe! Except, it was a shovelware iphone game with graphics suited to a children's flash animated web series. Boo and hiss! Didn't take long for a sizable amount of backlash to head their way. Hard to verify now, but I recall the announcement trailer had something akin to a 1-1000 like/dislike ratio on YouTube. Fans of the original games voicing their distaste, or the uninitiated voicing their lack of interest? In either case, after that fateful E3 there was never another word from Bethesda about it. The 'GoKeen.com' URL from the trailer redirects you wholly unceremoniously to the Bethesda homepage, and it's fairly clear that they'd rather we all simply forget about it. That being the case, why mention it at all? It was four years ago, after all.

Well, that's just it. That was four years ago. Ne'er a mention of the series made again outside a few references in DOOM 5. They went on to shit out Mighty DOOM, a shovelware mobile game based on DOOM which, with two recent blockbuster titles under it's storied belt, can weather the hit to its reputation. But nothing for ol' Billy Blaze. A character who, one could convincingly argue, was the Mario of DOS, languishes in obscurity, and I just don't get why. Clearly they have the means to produce something with the character, they intended to do so, and one can assume from the reaction they got from the mobile game announcement that there has to be some kind of audience with some kind of expectations for what that should look like. Neo-3D Realms at the very least produced Rad Rogers as something of a spirtual sequel to that early 90s DOS platforming genre. It was kinda shit, but so is everything else they've made. If Nintendo can put out four New Super Mario Bros titles, one would think that the guys raking in money off six trillion Skyrim re-releases might see their way to knocking out a sidescrolling action game. Wishful thinking, I guess.

That's about all I got at the moment. Maybe I'll make a habit of writing here. Maybe not. If, for some godforsaken reason, you've managed to stumble your way onto this post and know who I am, or don't know who I am for that matter, I have a proper website now. Well, a dot com, at least. Had it for the better part of a decade, actually. You can find it, and by extension, me, at https://www.KaijuTurtle.com . It's basically a directory of links to profiles I have on other sites. Going back to that notion of habitually posting here, perhaps I will add a link to this page in time. Wouldn't that be novel?

In the meantime, Keep your stick on the ice.

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey

I've made myself a website. Well a blog, anyway, but i won't be using it as such. Nor do I imagine I'll be using it much at all. However, the idea struck me that it would be nice to have a place to keep certain things organized.

Until I can be arsed to do so, however, here is an animation of mine;