Ozzie

Excellent timing for a Twin Peaks podcast generally speaking, though not necessarily for me, since I've just binge watched some of season 1, then the last episode of season 2, then the movie, then The Missing Pieces... ...hm, well, I might just watch the rest again, too, just for the podcast.

I actually watched the movie before I ever saw the series! Back then I thought I would be able to understand it once I saw the series. Oh, how naive I was... The movie is immensely frustrating. If you're looking for answers, then it's not the place to go to. There was meant to be a scene in the movie which would have made clear what was already abundantly clear at the end of season 2, namely what happened with Dale Cooper. There's no further development to that plotline either. Instead the movie recounts Laura Palmer's last seven days alive and sheds light on the life and death of Theresa Banks and the investigations of her murder. All this is often very interesting, but not really what a fan might care about the most after having watched season 2. Instead of answers the viewer is offered only more questions. Also, the film differs significantly in terms of tone to the series. There's a lot less humor and a lot less life. It feels off. Despite all that, the movie has a lot to offer. I enjoyed watching it again. There are many memorable scenes, like the one where the David Bowie character appears, which is intercut with the scene in the place above the convenience store...I never could figure out what was happening there, but it stuck in my mind, it's overwhelming and chilling. The scene where Mike drives by and yells at Leeland and Laura in the car. The night where Donna finds out what Laura's night life looks like. The scene where Laura psychotically laughs in the face of what Bobby did, the scene where Laura finds out who Bob is...so many memorable, chilling scenes. But tonally it doesn't gel well with the series and it throws up more questions while offering no answers of note. You have to be able to get past that.

I know double posting is bad forum etiquette, but I simply need to say more about Fire Walk with Me. What struck me about it is that during many of its scenes you have the feeling that nothing happens outside of the camera frame. Like in the scenes inside the school, you don't have the feeling that anyone is somewhere in the hall or in the classroom. Bobby and Laura talk at a locker and no one else seems to be there, or Laura walks down a street and the town seems devoid of people. The movie often does a bad job of suggesting that anything else happens outside of the frame. As a viewer I at least was often aware that they shot on a set and where its limits were. It felt distracting. I think part of the reason for this is that establishing shots are often missing. Some scenes are entirely static without cuts or change of perspective. This may not be entirely unintentional, and not always a bad choice, but not always a good one either. I also watched The Missing Pieces, the collection of deleted/extended/alternately cut scenes from the movie, which is one and a half hours long. I'm not sure why they put that together instead of releasing a Director's Cut of the movie, because putting some of those scenes back in would have definitely made the movie a lot better. Not all of the scenes are much of relevance or compelling, but highlights include a scene in which the FBI agent convinces the local authorities to hand Theresa Bank's body over to him by punching the sheriff repeatedly in the face, others which shed more light on the character played by David Bowie, a continuation of the sequence of Laura's and Donna's night out and an argument Josey and Pete have at the sawmill with an old guy over a plank of wood. There are also extensions/alternate takes of the convenience store scene and the scene in the black lodge, which wouldn't really fit into the movie though. Thankfully they're subtitled, so you're finally able to understand what Bob & Co. are babbling about. Well, the words at least, not their meaning necessarily...

Because of the announcement of the third season of Twin Peaks, I was in the mood for the series again today. So I started watching some episodes of the first season. Special Agent Cooper seems to me to be less an aspirational character now than when I watched it the last time. He's quite self-righteous and not always incredibly enlightened I would say, though I still love it how commands authority. I think a lot of the most fascinating scenes are between child and father, like in the case of Bobby, Audry, and in the prequel movie of Laura. So, Fire Walk with Me...is there any version of the movie that has the black lodge scenes subtitled? Because I can barely make out a word that's said. There's also the scene where the child with the mask whispers something to Laura that's hard to understand, and that isn't subtitled in the version I have either! For most of the easily understandable dialogue subtitles can be turned on, though. What a joke... I'm watching the movie for the third time now and I still haven't a clue what's being said in the black lodge scene after the David Bowie character appears! Despite this frustration that let me hunt in vain for some help on the internet, I like the endless mysteries the movie provides. Lynch is really good with mysteries. I kinda am in a mood for more mysteries in that vain. Any recommendations? Edit: I found the shooting script of Fire Walk With Me online. Kinda frustrating that I had to pause to movie to look up the script to figure out what's being said. Meh... :/

That seems to be the case! Hm, should have thought of that. Nevermind then.

I don't know anything to say about the game, except that the review of it by John Walker was abominable. Did the guy degrade as a writer, did he ever. I've started to consciously avoid his articles now. A shame, he was my favorite writer on RPS after Kieron back in the day. :/

So...my post count has been stuck at 49 for a while now. It's one of those small irritations that started to nag at me. I just checked how many posts I actually made. 65 seems to be the answer. Edit: 66 now.

This week's Doctor Who was quite something, deeply flawed and exceptional at the same time. “Kill the Moon”, as the episode is called, goes into depths of character drama between companion and The Doctor that the show has priorly shied away from. If this is a sign of the direction the show will continue to pursue in the future, then I’m very happy. By now Clara feels like the most human and fully formed companion the show has ever had, which is quite the turnaround from her superficial portrayal in series 7! That the episode conveniently waves away any serious consequences that you would expect to result from Clara’s decision is its biggest flaw. There are many smaller ones, too. The end scene in the Tardis is exceptional though and something we haven’t seen quite like in the show before. . The A.V. Club features a wonderful writeup about the episode.

I wondered about that. Now I do.

Yes! Good.

I just finished watching Steins;Gate. Its story makes close to zero sense, but somehow I didn't care. It's clearly aimed at adolescents since the story is fueled all by emotion and moodyness and close to zero reason. The Butterfly Effect is quite similar in that regard and in many others as well. The thing that bugs me about The Butterfly Effect is that it states at the very beginning that changing the past has unforeseeable consequences for the future, yet in the movie the main character changes things with quite foreseeable outcomes. It's no different in Steins;Gate. The characters in Steins;Gate all behave based on intuition, and damn do they make stupid choices at times that seem really smart to them and are often confirmed by the results to have been the right ones . It's clear that the anime is based on a harem Visual Novel. I played the beginning of it a bit, but the unfocused storytelling that gets constantly distracted with side attractions that don't further the main plot and let the story lose steam, made me stop playing it. The anime is better I think. It seems to stick pretty close to the Visual Novel, it even uses some of the same music. Annoying in both VN and anime, but less so in the latter, is that you as a viewer will figure out certain things a long time before any of the characters do. How long it took the characters in the VN to figure out that they built a time machine was embarrassing. I played it with a friend and we constantly sat there wondering "will they figure it out now", only to be disappointed yet again. Steins;Gate the anime is very enjoyable, as long as you don't hope for a time travel story with a consistent rule set. Edit: The anime also reminds me of Final Destination and the ending of the The Wedding of River Song episode of Doctor Who.

I bought Hack & Slah a few days ago impulsively. I'm a Double Fine fanboy and while DF-9's fate disappoints me like most people who care about it, the willful misrepresentation of DF's actions made me buy it impulsively. Basically the raging angry masses made me do it. I already played the Amnesia Fortnight prototype of it back then. Of the bunch it was the one I was the least impressed with. Thankfully though the finished product is quite good! It has puzzles that are very satisfying to solve, and the tools and gimmicks it gives the player are fun to play around with. The story is rather basic, but the delivery funny and charming. The character portraits are just beautiful! Aesthetically speaking it's pretty good looking, though I wish the sprites had some more animation frames. Also, due to the odd perspective, it looks just wrong when Alice falls to her death (or Johanson, as I called her). The game is quite frustrating in parts and feels unpolished. There are little bugs here and there, like Alice becoming invisible or the game world being rendered in a pixely look outside of dialogs. Especially the beginning is unforgivingly frustrating. Basically the game auto-saves after every map change. One of the first maps consists of a forest and is rather big. I made a silly mistake, was reset to the start of it and lost 10 minutes of progress. Later on, the "universe collapsed", which is the game's way of saying that it crashed, though in such a case it doesn't crash totally. Instead you can then reload a save, which the last one was at that point about 5-10 minutes ago. The crashes can happen more often later on, in Act 4, when you're actually modifying scripts, and I find it unfortunate that the game won't tell you more clearly how you made it crash, which I feel it should for the learning experience. I'm not sure Hack & Slash is all that good edutainment. The visual representation of the scripts seem to make them harder rather than easier to understand for me. I did some scripting in Adventure Game Studio some years ago, yet I had trouble understanding the terms and why things functioned like they did. In too short a time too much terminology is introduced, which is made worse by made up terms that supposedly should help make the whole thing easier to understand ("data crystals" is an example for that). I actually managed to modify some of the scripts successfully without quite understanding how my solutions worked, and I still have trouble understanding it. Bob, Alice's sidekick, is similar to Navi in Ocarino of Time, but not of much help. You can initiate explanatory dialog with him, but it doesn't clear up much of the confusion. And you can't talk about certain aspects with him you desperatedly want to understand. So I manage to solve puzzles without quite understanding the solution. That's no good. I also don't think that it's good that people think it's a bug that a lot of the dialog text isn't correctly rendered. You actually solve this problem as part of a puzzle, but since no character in-game comments on how certain other characters can't be understood/certain things can't be read, it's too easy to mistake it as a bug. I feel it's an aspect that should've been pointed out by Alice and her sidekick. Also, the freaking boomerang. Goddammit, is it finicky! For one puzzle you need to hit an angular surface with it, and I had a hard time making it work! I have no clue why the game is so picky in that regard, it shouldn't be. It's a polish issue that, like the difficulty spike in Act 4, could have been fixed with some more weeks of development time, which it sadly didn't get. I hope the small remaining bugs will be fixed at least. I haven't finished the game yet, but I will play it further. It's certainly compelling and I'm having fun with it, if also some frustrations. It's just disappointing to me that I can't recommend the game without reservations. :/ Has anyone else played it yet?

It sounds awful, yet absolutely convincing. Let's hope the theory won't quite hold true.

It's a no-win situation, everyone is disappointed. I mainly fault Double Fine's lack of communication and marketing skills. I appreciate Tim's candor, especially since he has the slight tendency to whitewash. Also, good of him to answer the questions himself, since he could have just as easily dumped this task on JP.

That goes against expectations, yes, and it's disappointing. More was suggested. But since I got the game for free I'm happy with what I got.

Okay, this week's game is merely the second thecatamites game I've ever played. The first was, of course, his greatest hit Space Funeral. So I already knew he likes to make games fast and dirty, he's about as far away from a perfectionist as you possibly can be (so the opposite of me), has kind of a Punk ethos regarding the game making process and goes for easy to use tools. Nevertheless...no fullscreen mode? Fixed resolution? (A punishment for those with high desktop resolutions...) Music that starts from the beginning with every room change? The controls are...? Oh right, arrow keys...now I'm stuck on this one screen and I don't know how to get out of it. No key press does anything. Oh, RIGHT, MOUSE CLICK! I didn't get anything out of this one particularly. Soo, the thing has two endings? And the game loops after you reach the end? I have to go with the obvious and superficial and say that the game grated somewhat on my nerves, mainly because of the repetitive music. I guess it was somewhat humorous, but the humor was drowned out for me. Hm.

Better than nothing, as far as I'm aware most gaming sites still haven't adressed the issue at all. It would be nice if they did, it would act as a good countermeasure against a lot of the misinformation going around. It's odd that you have to visit websites like The Guardian to read up on an issue that affects the gaming industry.

RPS has finally posted their stance on the harassment campaign/claims of journalistic corruption of the past month.

I'm a bit annoyed that YouTubers feel the need to have an opinion about everything. Many of them are badly informed about what happened the last weeks and yet they absolutely have to tell their fans and the world what they think about it. In the case of TotalBiscuit, JonTron and the results haven't been too great.Now NerdCubed couldn't resist the urge to add his opinion about the events. It's not the worst, but he explicitly says that he hates both sides and takes with this the higher ground or the moderate middle. Maybe he doesn't want to fall into the simplistic trap of just adhering to one side, to not become part of an us vs. them mentality, so I guess he finds it preferable to say me and these idiots vs. those idiots. https://twitter.com/DanNerdCubed/status/508356704262959104 This tweet confuses me. What does he have to feel relieved of? He wasn't attacked or harrassed or mobbed. He can make jokes at both sides of the debate, but what is there to joke about women being systematically harrassed out of the industry? I think generalizing the issue as two sides waging a war makes it easier to dismiss the whole issue out of hand. Look, here a feminist said something stupid, so this side is just as deserving of hate! It's a case of lack of information. He seems to think that #GamerGate wasn't a smokescreen for aggressive mysogynism from the start. He might as well stop calling himself a feminist if people change from #GamerGate to #GameEthics because the former became toxic... https://twitter.com/DanNerdCubed/status/508356936694505472 I'm not sure why people are so adamant on insisting that harrassment is always equally lashed out by both sides. Yes, the demonstrators in Ferguson dealt out just as much violence as the police did. Yes, Palestinians killed just as many Israelian children as Israelis did Palestinian. And feminists harrassed just as many misogynists as misogynists harrassed feminists. This is all absolutely true and I'm not being sarcastic at all. What else could he mean with a statement like this? Disappointing. Meh. I'm not sure where his anger is coming from, he has no reason to be angry considering his position on the higher ground he elevated himself to. He really hasn't been paying attention. Why does he feel the need to share his point of view, not just in private, but publically, as part of his YouTube personality to his fans and the world? Why not just admit "I don't know"? Contrary to TotalBiscuit though he has his heart in the right place. He is for equality and better representation of women in games. He just has no clue about what happened the past few weeks, he merely pretends he does. Maybe it is hard to get the right information if you're not part of the IdleThumbs community? Maybe I'm spoiled. I'm sorry for my aimless ranting here, but I had to get this off my chest.

My guess: FOIA = Freedom of Information Act PD = Police Department SF = San Francisco

I like JonTron's videos, too, they're intelligently made dumb entertainment and lots of fun to watch. Too bad the guy himself is a jerk. I don't think I will continue watching his videos, they're kinda impossible to enjoy now that I know what kind of character he is. Hopefully he'll continue to grow up. He shouldn't whine about too much sensitivity in regards to issues he's not the victim of. He can't say unnice things about Zoe Quinn at an inopportune time and not be naive in thinking that he isn't giving ammunition to the wrong people, and not be a wimp when he complains that Tim Schafer is mobbing him because Tim re-tweeted a tweet of Jon's and commented on it. The guy lacks perspective in a remarkable way. Still, humans have thankfully the ability to reflect and grow, and I hope he will use some time to reflect on his behaviour.

I hope so! I would love to wear one the next time I'm on stage. I would prefer the Social Justice Warrior t-shirt, but this one is good, too!

Honestly, tears were almost welling up when I saw the mere "What a week" on the front page. Because it was a terrible week, nay, weeks now. I wasn't affected by any of it personally, but it concerned me, and suddenly in that moment, but not before, it saddened me. What little things can do...thanks.

I don't disagree, but I don't think it has anything to do with what I take issue with in the article. But then, I'm not honestly sure who the article is aimed at, despite it constantly making a mention of the audience. I guess it adresses the unenlightened who can't help themselves be assholes towards women? So maybe they really should only criticize men? I don't like the article. It supports Kotaku's policy regarding Patreon and thinks the "Women Making Video Games for Charity" campaign is a great idea. Or at least it pretends to to appease angry wrongheaded unenlightened young male gamers. It's not good.

To paraphrase he says "don't criticize the women, criticize the men". That sounds like the women can't take it. Meh. :/