Loving media is a hard job… It’s not finding media to love that’s hard, nor is the ability to embrace that love, to wear it on my sleeve and say “Yes, this thing here is a favourite of mine”. The part that’s hard about it is that despite it being something so personal and filled with emotion, all our emotional strings are tuned differently. When there’s a work of art that strikes a chord that resonates so clearly for you, pass it onto someone else and it won’t hit on the same level for them at all. “ My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me? ” is an obscure Japanese art-house film about noise music, it could be my absolute favourite depending on the day. Unless you’re someone who can not only sit through but get something from the emotional crescendo of a movie being 10 minutes of feedback and distortion it won’t be yours, or even something you’d want to watch at all. I so desperately want people to have the same feelings that I get from the things I love, but if I can’t have th...
Some spoilers for Citizen Sleeper and Cyberpunk 2077 below. Citizen Sleeper is a game I thought I loved. Liked? I still know that, but for a while since I played it in 2023, it stood as an example of great harmony between gameplay and thematic intent. It’s funny, how stuff lives up in your head, huh? I replayed it this week on my Switch while visiting my parents for a few days, just hanging out with the family dogs on the couch while I explored the structure of the Eye. If I had to sum up the game, I’d call it a “space disability simulator”- you’re an artificial clone of another’s consciousness, imprinted into a metal body and sent off to work until you collapse for the purposes of a corporation. You escape, but the corporation builds a failsafe into all of their ‘sleepers’ - The need for a proprietary stabilizer, a substance that prevents the artificial bodies from decaying. Effectively, you are a disabled person reliant on corporate healthcare in order to keep your body functio...