Beautiful Aesthetic, Terrible Game

There is a game for the Atari 2600 called 'Bugs'. Released in 1982, it depicts gorgeous, gargantuan, blocky bugs, which crawl rapidly to the top of the screen and kill your ass. Your task is to shoot them before they can do this. But reader, it is hard. Those bugs reach the top of the screen at lightning speed, leaving you very little time to pick them off. 

There is just no balance or finesse to the one single gameplay mechanic: moving your cursor around to shoot those things. The cursor moves in this horrible cumbersome way, often snapping to positions just left or right of the bugs' hitboxes, leading to immediate, unstoppable death.

There is also, if this wasn't bad enough, an orb-shaped thing awaiting you just underneath the enemy bugs. This thing will kill you if you touch it, creating an impasse that stops you from aiming at whichever bug is out of reach when you are on one side of the orb. The result? Near-instant death. So far, so consistent.

While I do like the design of this game - those big, juicy bugs and the flashing screen of pink-green-orange-blue horizon - the game is more or less unplayable crap. 

This is probably just how Ender of Ender's Game felt. Also, one of the bugs is a lizard.

Who is the Sexiest Pokémon?

Many fools have pondered the question, but I am here to finally answer definitively: Who is the sexiest Pokémon?

Now, I know which one comes to mind first. Obviously, it's Rapidash. That's a lithe, strong horse who is literally on fire. And she feels nothing. Very cool. Very alluring to all the fire-lovers in the audience. But ultimately, she's just a wonderful woman who needs to be left alone in her field. She's a single mother and she's not afraid to burn down the whole barn if she doesn't get her salt lick. She's a mysterious figure, yes, but she's honestly too normal, and perhaps parodoxically, too elegant for this title.

A common pick that the clamouring crowd looks to is Electabuzz. While I do understand this - he's stern and a little bit volatile, but also scrappy and hardworking - the truth of the matter is that he is a bit ugly. Like, I'm sorry Electabuzz, but you are not a serious being when it comes down to it. Yes, this guy can kill a child instantly by looking at it, and that appeals to many, but he looks like he's standing in front of the beer fridge in Tesco, indecisive because he's already had a little bit of a friend's joint about fifteen minutes ago.

Some people with eclectic tastes cite Klefki, the haunted key Pokémon, and while sure, haunted keys jangling about do betray a certain unpredictable, spooky delight, quite frankly this Pokémon is far too employed to really climb up the ladder of sexiness. Like, some Pokémon are too unemployed (Electabuzz), but Klefki has the opposite problem. I can't relax around a Klefki, because I know that thing needs to run off and unlock the basement any moment now. It's on call to lock up. And that just makes it hard to relax.

Girafarig is close to the top. Long, elegant, gorgeous neck, and a beautiful dappled pattern adorning its graceful body give it an incredible serenity and unique appeal. And then, oh my God, a weird dark tail with TEETH that BITE. It's scary, and yet you know that Girafarig will treat you well, bring you an excellent wine to taste with its home-cooked, delicately seasoned dinner. Great. But there's one Pokémon that knocks this demonic giraffe off the podium.

Regirock. It's Regirock. The very picture of masculinity. Stoic and hard all over. No-one can reach him. No one dares. This is the sexiest Pokémon, as voted for by one thousand of Northumberland's top midwives (Gornguss et al, 2017).

*** 

Well folks, there you have it. And honestly, looking at this Regirock, I have to say - it's really cute.

I watched Charli XCX's Mockumentary

I was interested in The Moment, Charli XCX's mockumentary about the tail end of the phenomenon that Brat, her lauded 2024 album, became, for several reasons. First, there is something weird about it. Something about this idea that feels perfectly, deliciously weird. This is the sort of thing that could so easily be an embarrassing, lacklustre flop. It sounds like a fun, potentially barbed, canter through the warped microcosm of the music industry she exists in. But it also sounds: stupid.

As the film opens, we're shoved into the great funnel of Charli's promotional life, hapless handler in tow, thrust into the eternal awkwardness of corporate organisational noodling. The record label is bringing in a weird director to make a weird tour film. Neither Charli, nor anyone else, seems to really know what's going on.

And it's messy, this clump of E4 comedy that emerges sheepishly from the screen, wagging its tail limply, knowing its not about to get any headpats. It starts off low, with dialogue a little bit too stilted and awkward, leaning into that The Office style reliance on the natural awkwardness of the moment, and desperately needing just one person who can act.

But luckily, it picks up. Charli is not a great actor, but the more the movie goes on, the more she sells this shellshocked, Fleabag version of herself, at first too cool for the inane squabbles and power-grabs going on around her, later insane and frantically driven to drastic choices by the spectre of celebrity, and later still nicely earnest, doing a lame but still touching monologue about letting Brat die, or actively killing it in a haze of mediocrity.

I find it really interesting that the narrative has her choosing, on purpose, to make cheap hack slop out of her greatest success, wanting to bury it in some ostentatious, awful, utterly corporate way that feels total. This is the great deviation from the real Charli that sits at the heart of the film, and it's kind of great - partly because it's sort of nonsensical, so antithetical to our vision of what Charli XCX is, so obviously a choice she wouldn't make in reality - here she is, an artist freed from the trap of keeping her baby. Authenticity be damned. Jeff Bezos winks and we all laugh.

Plus, the gay people have successfully committed a beautiful financial crime. Something is, in a way, deeply right with this world.

Three Brat cards out of five.

 ★★★☆☆

A Catalogue of Recommendations

Here is a list of lists. Various media recommendations that I've saved. Lets all watch and listen to these soon. It is our solemn duty.

 

David Lynch's favourite films of all time, via lufilmclub.

Still from The Killing.

• One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
• Stroszek (1977)
• The Wizard of Oz (1939)
• Rear Window (1954)
• The Killing (1956)
• Mon Oncle (1958) 
• 8½ (1963)
• Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953)
• Sunset Boulevard (1950)

 

Gen X Soft Club adjacent albums, via gamxle.

Esthero's Breath from Another.

• 21 Hertz - Ocean of Time 
• Airlock - Drystar
• Hooverphonic - Blue Wonder Power Milk
• Beauty's Confusion - Breathe In 
• Belanova - Cocktail
• Vanessa Daou - Slow to Burn
• Soulstice - Illusion
• Esthero - Breath from Another 

 

Underrated gothic romance films, via nemiheartz.

Onegin (1999), a personal favourite.

• Dragonwyck (1946)
• Thirst (2009) 
• The Phantom Lover (1995)
• Angels and Insects (1995)
• Onegin (1999) 

 

Shibuya-kei album recommendations, via yotsuballin. 

Mayumi Kojima's Hatachi no Koi.

• Plus-tech Squeeze Box - Cartooom!
• Mayumi Kojima - Hatachi no Koi 
• Sheena Ringo - Forbidden
• Eden2001 - Musick
• Nerdneko - Nevermind
• Chocolat - One Too Many Chocolat
• Strawberry Machine - Girl Friend
• Risette - Risette
• Capsule - Cutie Cinema Replay
• Cibo Matto - Stereo Type A
• Kaede - Stardust in Blue
• Hal - Blue 

One Minute Drawings

Today I bring you some drawings I did in roughly a minute each (although I wasn't timing these). I always like drawings I make super quickly, and so I thought why not see what I can come up with, doing them as quickly as I possibly can.

It's pretty great for me, because it forces a complete simplification of design. I think one reason this works so well is that the time restriction forces loose, blobby shapes, but it also necessarily makes them look bold and decisive. I have no choice but to put down a line as quickly as possible.

You can also get a surprising amount of expression out of a really nondescript and minimalistic character, and in this wonderful, paradoxical way - through expressionlessness. Characters appearing to be sort of blank can feel like they do in fact have a rich expression bubbling under the surface. They seem thoughtful.

I really like this guy interacting with his dog. He seems loving, yet perhaps hesitant. They seem like they may be on the verge of a kiss. There is much to be inferred from their stance, tentatively approaching each other. 

I Finished Fantasy Life

This week on my 3DS, I've been playing a lot of Fantasy Life.

It's an odd game, an intriguing and unique combination of light RPG and life sim. I distinctly remember starting the game for the first time and feeling somewhat lost, undirected in this world full of potential. Soon I came to fully understand and get on board with the 'life' system - the jobs you'll spend the game swapping between - and I knew that my duty was, broadly, to go crafting crazy, but initially I was thrown by the extremely soft approach to the RPG of it all.

Ultimately, this was bolstered by the game's ending, which is by far its most clear deviation from broad RPG structure. There is no final boss. There is no biblical adversary. You waft along into the space-y, small world to say hi to your butterfly friend's dad, and the credits lovingly roll. I wasn't expecting such a lack of fanfare, but it makes sense of the game in front of me. It's more of a Stardew Valley with a bit of a story about evil crystals than it is an RPG with a Cooking Mama element.

Anyway, I've played about fifty hours of it in total, and as much as I do want to continue with some of the post-game minutiae, it all feels kind of aimless. I do want to collect different woods from chopping down different trees so I can make it past the 'adept' woodcutter rank, but what for? To get to the next rank? To do more quests? There's not really much of a sense of reward or progression at this stage, despite there being a million more ranks to climb for each respective 'life'.

So, I don't know. It's an interesting game. It's addictive, it's cute, and it has a fun little sense of humour. Finishing its story may have been one of the most anti-climactic game ending moments of all time. And yet, I can't deny, I do love it. 

Christmas Tree Accident

big man, small body
gilded cage of his arms, biceps like soft-boiled eggs
straining against a string of sinew
looks like it might snap

but no, he pauses, lax
the bulb of his ability undistorted
a wizard’s orb in flesh
twine around a victorian christmas present

fresh pheasant, tiny legs
skittering around, mouse-ish
until he reaches up, greedy
top of the tree, glittering star

jesus wept, pines like glass
an egg has burst
yolk in a puddle, spreading
baubles jostled