Ahhh, September at last.
Fall is in the air, at least here in the Pacific Northwest. It’s not fully here yet, of course, but a couple weeks ago you could feel the shift. There was suddenly a slight chill in the wind, and it started getting about 10 degrees cooler at night. Survived another summer, wasn’t actually too too bad this year, didn’t have any heat waves or anything.
Work has been very stressful lately, haven’t been sleeping well as a result. What actually helps is getting out of the apartment and exercising, but generally after work I’m so tired I just stay in front of the screen for a few more hours and then go to bed. Bleh. But I’ve still managed to watch and read and play some good stuff this month, so let’s get into it!
The Changeling
I remember first hearing about Victor LaValle when he published his sort of rewrite of HP Lovecraft’s The Terror at Red Hook back in 2016, called The Ballad of Black Tom. I was intrigued and decided to pick it up, and really enjoyed it a lot! Sort of a rough mix of horror, fantasy, and emotional storytelling that was very readable.
For my birthday this year, my dad got me what’s called The LaValle Quartet, which just seems to be a new printing of his four published novels, with new trade dress? I guess to coincide with one of them, The Devil in Silver, being made into a TV series (season 3 of The Terror, weirdly). I’m finally getting around to them now, and I started off with The Changeling, which actually came in 2017, one of the later ones in this grouping.
Anyway, it’s really good! I blitzed through it in just a few days, super fun and readable. Felt very similar to Black Tom, but more refined and considered. Rather than playing around in Lovecraft’s mythos, he’s forging his own new ideas here, and it all comes together a lot better.
Rather than the classics of Weird Fiction, this time we’re blending fairy tales with contemporary human drama.
This books is walking a tonal tightrope almost from the very beginning. The narrator is talking about events through the haze of memory and story, not objectivity, from the opening pages. Everything takes on a kind of vague and yet totemic feeling to it. The story goes this way because that’s how stories go, and so on.
Which ends up being very thematically appropriate, as what this book is about is like… self-made mythology. The stories we tell to justify our own actions, to explain why things are the way that they are. Essentially the Just So Stories of your own life, which are often passed down in families as they are here, and what happens when you learn the truth behind them.
I don’t want to spoil the whole plot, of course, but suffice it to say I think it all works and avoids falling into the obvious traps. There’s not a ton of lore or over-explanation of things, there’s not too much focus on practicalities, it lets magical things be magical and allows them to clash with the very mundane modern setting, which enhances the storytelling.
Moby Dick explored a similar idea, but it is completely lost in the imagined fantasies about Ahab as a demigod. This book goes out of its way to explore the fallout, when those fantasies come down to earth, without completely dismissing them as juvenile.
Also: it’s just very readable! Short, punchy chapters interspersed with longer and more tense ones. I loved it, highly recommended.
The Outsider
Another name that is extremely common, some may say overused. There are a dozen movies called The Outsider, and books! But in this case, I am referring to the HBO miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name.
This is a series I watched because of a podcast, in this case Just King Things, one of my all-time favorites. Many of the movies and TV shows I’ve watched for that podcast (okay, specifically the patreon bonus episodes) have been… shall we say… of somewhat low quality. Often because the people doing the adaptation are too faithful to King’s words, which do not work at all when spoken aloud.
This one is probably the best thing I’ve watched for it? Maybe second to Kubrick’s The Shining, that’s hard to beat, but it’s up there, in any case. It’s especially hard hitting because it’s coming on the heels of three seasons of Mr. Mercedes, an adaptation of three other King books, which were very similar in content and themes, but a complete mess in execution. In fact, I think that’s the easiest way to talk about why this one works so well.
The themes we’re working with are like… the dangers of the modern internet, in general, as exemplified by the troll who just hates and wants to cause pain. In Mr. Mercedes, this is done extrtemely literally in a very goofy way. There’s a guy who is like the prototypical basement-dwelling nerd who has been empowered by this new era, lashing out at the world because his own life sucks. And then it turns out he’s psychic and stays around as like an evil ghost, later on.
Meanwhile, The Outsider takes things in a supernatural direction immediately. The thing causing problems is not literally on the internet, but it’s acting the way assholes act online… but in real life. It’s a physicalized version of an internet troll, in a way, feeding on the pain and misery it causes (this being the eponymous Outsider, of course).
Honestly, the biggest difference is just in pacing and how the respective shows set up their mysteries. Mr. Mercedes is unbelievable slow, at all times. The plot barely exists for most of its run, moving at an agonizingly glacial pace. It’s the type of show where you finish an episode and just wonder “why am I even watching this? Nothing is happening.”
The Outsider gets into things right away, with a big high-concept premise: what if there was a murder mystery where there was rock solid physical and circumstantial evidence proving both guilt and innocence?
It starts off playing it very straight. This is almost a police procedural, about a horrible crime and the investigation, but they nail it early on. But then… it’s just impossible. The guy is in two places at once, seemingly. And then he gets murdered before the trial can even happen, so the whole thing is swept under the rug. Except… it’s not over, his family is still being tormented, and the detective can’t let it go. Things expand and complicate from there.
It’s such a better hook than “a guy did a massacre and then decides to goad the detective that didn’t catch him into trying to investigate again”. Like, it’s more active right from the start, instead of orbiting around people who are inactive and have to be constantly convinced and re-covinced to take part in the story that’s being told. Even the version of Holly Gibney in this series is better-realized. She’s in all three seasons of Mr. Mercedes, and is basically a complete nonentity, I’m not even sure why she’s there. But here she’s The Brilliant Detective who cracks the case in a convincing way, and has her own separate plotline going on! It’s so good!
I’m not even finished watching it yet, but it’s definitely in the top 10 King adaptations already. The editing and cinematography are top notch. I thought I had become immune to this type of prestige TV, but god damn this one fucking works.
Entropy
A new game from the developers of Dread Delusion, which I thought was… okay, but showed a lot of potential. This has a similar low-poly, crunchy visual style, but is going even further in that direction, with a CRT filter and more aggressive dithering (both of which you can turn off, if you want).
Rather than a sort of first-person RPG caught in between being an immersive sim and a Bethesda-style game, this is just a straight-up turn-based JRPG. I think this works much better with the aesthetics they’re going for, keeping the action somewhat at a distance helps hide the seams and make things more cohesive. The intentionally slow, awkward animations work much better when it’s not any sort of action game, for example.
In terms of systems, it feels very inspired by the SaGa series. You don’t have a strict set of story-provided characters. There are a couple you can get early on, but most are just mercenaries you hire, who take a cut from all the money you earn fighting enemies. You can recruit and endless supply of them in town, which is good becuase this game has perma-death for non-Player* party members.
When a character falls in battle, they cannot be revived in the moment, and after the fight you learn if they die permanently or suffer a permanent wound (or face no consequences at all, if you’re really lucky).
Abilities are determined entirely by equipment. Equip a sword and you can use special attacks, a spear gives different special attacks, a tome lets you cast magic, etc. Characters earn perks every three levels, which sort of lets them slot into a role, either gaining more abilities or enhancing their combat prowess in some way. It’s a simple system, but it works very well.
You also assign stats on level-up in an extremely granular way, like Dark Souls or Shin Megami Tensei. This can really get you into trouble if you neglect the wrong stats, as I did. Leaving everyone with low agility meant that the boss at the end of act I was completely impossible, killing party members before I could even have a single turn!
Now, all this makes the game sound really hardcore and difficult, and it is… for like the first half hour or so. Once you start gaining some levels and get more bodies in your party, things quickly shift in your favor. If this game has a serious flaw, it’s a lack of variety, and a lack of high-risk high-reward content. At a certain point I needed to grind everyone another level, and was reduced to just fighting easy battles on the world map over and over again.
It’s lacking that sort of core element of the JRPG ladder. The enemies never get that much harder outside of boss fights, and there are no obvious upgrades to save up and buy, except extra party members and a couple of spells.
But, it’s a really solid foundation. The art and writing are excellent, and I think the combat has a really good rhythm to it, which is critically important for these kinds of games. I eagerly anticipate the game being more finished, the developers plan to steadily release more acts over the next year or so. Dread Delusion looked and played extremely different even between the final beta and the full release, so this could really transform into something special.
*: In a very fun conceit, the player character is called The Player, as they are a member of a traveling theatre troupe.
New York, New York
Continuing my journey through the filmography of Martin Scorsese, I watched his ill-fated “musical” New York, New York last weekend. And boy… this was a tough watch.
In the midst of an incredible run of masterpieces and manum opi (magnums opus?), we have this weird mess of a movie, apparently powered by an overabundance of equal parts ambition and cocaine. The dark side of Scorsese’s early obsession with Robert De Niro.
Indeed, this movie is largely very functional… except for De Niro’s presence at the center, as a horrible misanthrope of a man who bumbles through every scene making everything worse. He’s out of not only a different genre of movie, but a whole different aesthetic universe of acting than everyone else and everything else going on here.
It’s like… Marty was clearly having a great time putting together these incredible artificial soundstage sets, which look almost impressionistic at times. Liza Minelli is doing an incredible job doing what she does best, especially late in the movie but even in the early scenes where she has to play the victim to DeNiro’s raging asshole’s affections. But at the center of all this throwback glamor is a dirty piece of street trash, still stuck in Travis Bickle mode, but somehow even less charismatic.
The amazing thing is that in their previous collaboraiton, De Niro plays a nihilistic murderer who is so depressed that he sees the whole world as his enemy, and after this he plays an outright phyiscally abusive lunatic, but Jimmy Doyle is obviously way more repellant. The whole movie warps around him, almost turning into psychological horror at times, but it stubbornly refuses to change completely, which is also its downfall.
It would be better if it didn’t have the triumphant third act, where it briefly turns into an actual musical and features an amazing version of the titular song. The fact that it becomes something close to a real movie after two hours of run time feels insulting. Like, we could’ve been doing this the whole time? So what the hell was all that about!?
Now, I’m going to say that doing like a revisionist western version of an old golden age musical, where the charismatic lead is revealed to be a huge jerk, is not a bad idea, in abstract. Just that this version was probably too extreme in one direction. It’s like 80% gritty Scorsese drama and 20% musical, in spite of the sets. I would hesitate to even call this movie a musical! It has a lot of music in it, but only one proper number, and that wasn’t even part of the original theatrical cut.
Anyway, last night I watched Raging Bull for the first time and it was like “oh yeah, this Scorsese kid knows his way around a camera, huh”. Just night and day how much better it was, actually insane. Lived up to the hype and then some. My recommendation is to watch that instead.
Strange Pictures
Finally getting around to some of the books I bought on my Portland trip earlier this year. I’ve got a huge pile, dunno if I’ll ever get to the bottom of it, haha. This was one I picked up on a vaguely recalled recommendation, as well as its striking cover.
It’s kinda funny, but I do often find myself literally judging books by their cover, when browsing at a bookstore. Absolutely not fair at all, the famous idiom is correct, but a good cover really does go a long way to catching interest.
I read Strange Pictures and the first of the sequels, Strange Houses (which is the red one). I don’t know that I’m gonna get the third one, or any more that come out. Probably had my fill of this gimmick.
The gimmick is thus: these are sort of horror mystery novels, where images are a central feature. There are all sorts of pictures in these books, reprinted almost excessively often in the pages as the hidden details are described. Honestly, they’d barely qualify for novel length without the images, they’re pretty thin on text.
This first one, Strange Pictures, concerns what psychological information you can glean from drawings, made by children and adults. The reveals are pretty fun, and this one fits together into a fascinating mystery through the perspective of several different characters in a very satisfying way. Honestly, I wouldn’t really classify it as “horror” per se, but then I have pretty high standards when it comes to that (even if I don’t realize it sometimes).
The second one was… kind of a step down. It starts off similarly, an outsider getting drawn into a weird mystery by an anomaly, but there are no perspective shifts. It’s all extremely straightforward, and there’s like one twist that feels very telegraphed. And it’s not… deepening the horror, this time; instead it softens the blow. The author kind of chickens out, at the last instant.
The plot is more contrived, the structure less interesting, the analysis of images (floor plans, in this case) more far-fetched. It has a really good opening few chapters and then just… doesn’t really go anywhere interesting after that. A shame!
Coyote vs. Acme
After being finally ripped away from the greedy, incompetent hands of the hated Zalsav, this movie finally made it into theaters a few weeks ago. It getting a release at all feels like a huge cultural victory, but how did the movie actually turn out?
Well… pretty damn good, I think. Definitely one to see in the theater, the first half hour is just joke after joke, people were laughing constantly, including me. Things trail off a bit towards the end, when it takes a somewhat serious turn, but honestly even then there are some quality gags.
One thing I really liked about this one is that like… it doesn’t do the Roger Rabbit thing of making the cartoon people celebrities and entertainers. They exist in the world more like muppets, as just regular people who happen to be embodiments of characters that are famous in our world. I think that works really well here, lets you deploy them more precisely. Especailly Bugs Bunny as the movie’s equivalent of Deep Throat.
The biggest I can levy, though, is that it has a thematic point that does not get in the way of it being funny. It all coheres together perfectly. This is a big contrast to The Day the Earth Blew Up, which felt more like it was at odds with itself, and just fell on the side of being a goofy irreverent movie in the end. Which is fine and all, but made it feel more ephemeral. I barely remembered that movie exists.
Whew! Well, I wanted to make up for the short post last month, and I think I did it. Just so much good shit lately, it’s nice. I’m feeling more artistically inspired than ever.
And there’s more good stuff on the way! I’m very excited for several big games comin’ up this fall, mostly in the line of JRPGs of course. We’ve got Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter and the new Fire Emblem just next week, and then Final Fantasy Resonance next month! I played the demo for that and had a great time. Sometimes, it’s nice to be pandered to.
Writing this, and last week’s post, made me feel a lot better. Getting all these thoughts out of my head, practicing my writing (and my typing)… it’s nice. As always, I want to blog more… find another big project… but I’m searching for something that inspires me in that way….
Until next time, shipmates!
The Beige Moth 