Some vague ramblings, senseless and aimless as a colorless moth
I’m gonna try writing some reviews!
So, Octopath Traveler is basically the reason I got a switch. The very first previews of it instantly captured my attention. It was such an amazing combination of SNES-style 16 bit sprite work and modern graphical effects. Finally, Square was going to pay tribute to their legacy of classic JRPGs without some sort of awful compromise on the art style. Continue reading “Octopath Traveler: An Odd Duck”
Hey! Another sorta game review-ish thing.
Assassin’s Creed Origins is a perfectly fine game. It’s got some incredible scenery, some decent writing here and there, but the core gameplay is a bit lacking. It’s a problem with AAA games in general, and more specifically the type of open-world games that Ubisoft develops. Continue reading “Assassin’s Creed Origins: It’s Fine”
You may not have heard of this game, I certainly hadn’t when it came out. It’s a modest Kickstarter success from a few years back, at first glance merely yet another indie game drowning in labels. It’s a pixel art throwback metroidvania with LGBT characters and time travel! Very easy to overlook, at the end of the day.
Last week, I was told to “find my life’s purpose”. It was in a very well-meaning context, just a sort of generic bit of encouraging life advice. But it really struck me, because I’ve thought before about how the idea of life having a purpose at all is some real bullshit.
Today we’ve got another nice little chunk of narrative, after those low-key backstory and religious chapters. But, it also finds plenty of time for fun little asides and bits of philosophy here and there, so it ends up being quite long.
I’m trying to get out of the mode of going through the whole chapter point by point. There’s just too much in this book, and its very existence warns against that kind of close analysis as a sisyphean task. So, I will try to restrict myself to the points and observations I find most interesting. Continue reading “Chapter 13: Wheelbarrow”
With this chapter, we briefly move back into one of Melville’s more comfortable, more popular subjects: The south seas, which is to say the islands of the southern Pacific ocean.
As I mentioned before, this chapter isn’t an exact transcript of what Queequeg told Ishmael that night, but rather a sort of reconstructed narrative based on that, information later gleaned from Queequeg, and from other miscellaneous individuals who knew of the story. Continue reading “Chapter 12: Biographical”
So, now that our old pal Ishmael has gotten himself hitched, let us follow him into his marital bedchamber for a bit of intimate action. This is another short one, but contains one of my absolute favorite passages in the whole book!
Now that we’ve got church out of the way, it’s time to get real chummy with some dudes just bein’ bros. Just a real couple o’ old pals, pallin’ around! That’s it and that’s all, certainly no subtext here, no sirree.
These next few chapters make an interesting counterpoint to the harsh, literally sermonizing tone of the last little run. It’s a nice change of pace. Continue reading “Chapter 10: A Bosom Friend”
And here we are, at the climax of the most overtly religious section of Moby-Dick; or, the Whale. Now that the church itself, the pulpit, and Father Mapple have all been introduced, it’s time for the main event! Continue reading “Chapter 9: The Sermon”
Let us continue the Theology lessons, here in this, the most churchy run of chapters in Moby-Dick; or, the Whale.
This chapter contains some real meat in that particular vein, as well as appealing to a particular style of Christian aesthetic that I enjoy a great deal. After the doubts raised in The Chapel, it’s time to get a little more sincere, as the chaplain finally makes his appearance.
The Beige Moth 