i think one of my favorite ancient greek words is ψυχαγογέω, ‘to lead souls, to drag souls’, because it is both used for hermes leading the shades of the dead to the underworld but also for that incredible empathic bond that is created between the artist and the public during the (oral, in this case, but not only) performance, the moment in which the artist reaches the ὓψος, the sublime and is thus capable of ‘dragging the souls’ of the public in one great collective emotional experience
Behold: the reason why it’s taken 25 years to get a remake of Riven
My theory is that they lost the masters that they created this animation from. And this seems like a royal bitch to recreate in higher definition from scratch.
I knew several people who would make this kind of thing for shits & giggles over a weekend almost a decade before Source Filmmaker came out.
Like, I always used to plan too long-term, in Spiderweb games (Exile/Avernum) I’d always clear out the first goblin caves and keep going back to pick up every least valuable loot, like the rocks that weren’t even ranged equippable until after Nethergate, to haul back to town and sell and then buy all the skills the pay-trainer offered up to fill before I moved on
Which crosses very productively with the thing where I can game contemporary trends put to tell where they’ll eventually end up
Which is maybe part of how it works out that I am now more amazingly well-positioned than I could ever imagine.
Like, in 1999 I was like “anime, happy hardcore, JRPGs, and Daft Punk is the important stuff going on” and with the benefit of hindsight was I wrong?
Basically my experience right now is that my very first diagnosis of social cycles and history in like my late ‘90s teens was 100% correct and all my attempts to live in line with my understanding of them finally succeeded perfectly and I won like, life
Like that sounds so comical but instead of just dismissing it that spurs me to prod at its weakest point but it doesn’t yield
I mean some of my evaluating my current life and situation as off-the-charts-great might just be the anxiety I was calibrated to disappearing and maybe… the depression? I honestly have no clue what the bipolar’s up to these days – I’ve noticed that my mood of late weeks is no longer at nadir and really past midpoint, but last one felt like a fizzle, “maybe the real mania was the anticipation we experienced along the way” is bullshit – but the down phases of that were mostly experienced as feeding the anxiety
You ever think about how World of Warcraft repair fees and auction listing costs – set not because mods needed the gold but to counterbalance their distribution of new value and prevent inflation, with a side effect of encouraging authority-approved means of generating resources at the expense of ones deemed abusive and antisocial but otherwise viable – were taxes?
internet user pedestalizing young attractive women or interpreting their behavior much more charitably than they would for another demographic: being nicer to women is feminism, yes? I am fighting the incentives that make things weird and bad?
// incoherently getting this out before going for dinner
there’s a person on twitter who’s a friend of a friend through multiple links, shows up on my feed sometimes, generally makes funny and enjoyable posts. Once made a post that was like, “when men have messy apartments I’m like yeah okay, but when women have messy habitats I’m a little freaked out and I judge them more”
I was. amazed by this. My dude, this is literally sexism! You have wrapped around all the way and returned to normal sexism! How do you not recognize this! I almost pointed this out, but decided we didn’t have the rapport / character limit for this conversation to have P>0.8 of going well, and scrolled on.
almost everyone in my extended irl and internet sphere wants Equality in some vague way. they want the Dynamics to not Be Fucked, and they mill around doing things that are not “literally trying to treat people the same way regardless of gender”. And my axe to grind is that (1) this will tend to deposit you back into Literal Normal Sexism land, (2) even if you’re in some New Weird Sexism land, it’s still sexism and you should cut that out.
when I was younger I used to be a hardliner on “literally treat people the same way”. then I became more corrupt or less autistic or whatnot and now recognize this isn’t possible, but I still think genderblindness should be the starting point. And people seem so freaking interested in doing anything but this. They want to analyze the differences and digest them into different treatment. They themselves have personal or social incentives for wanting or giving certain kinds of treatment. And those incentives will win out over (my) (genderblind) ideology
I was hosting a party last week, and found out a potential woman attendee had (1) drunkenly gone around grabbing men’s asses at a prior event, (2) made public posts complaining about being shot down unnecessarily cruelly when one of them declined to cuddle with her. Said guy was telling me this in an uber back from buying alcohol and I was amazed, like, wait, you’re relaying this so casually – don’t you want her banned? I will if you want.
And he just – didn’t. He said that while he now disliked her, and felt slightly violated, he didn’t mind that much, and he didn’t want her banned just for fairness’s sake. Which was his prerogative. And it was one of many moments when I realized that very few people on any ideological branch are on board with this program that seems obvious to me, which is that we will not have equality until we are willing to treat people equally. The forces of unequal treatment are just that powerful.
(Not that I’ve, you know, gone around with a megaphone and said “HEY, DOES ANYONE ELSE THINK, NAIVELY, THAT WE SHOULD JUST – TRY THIS LITERAL EQUALITY THING –”)
sigh. I’ll soon shut up and hit post and go out for dinner, and probably during dinner I’ll start squirming about participating in culture war and delete this
but. come on! I know this isn’t 100% possible, but can we shoot for 90% or 80%? Can people not see that new double standards, of any kind, are not the way out?
Well there’s not consensus over what the form of equal treatment should be. In the 1980s-90s, the view that women should adopt the male practice of accepting petty unwanted sexual aggression with equanimity – which would ALSO represent gender-equalized norms – was very widely attested.
This dissensus is, of course, why gay and lesbian sexual culture are so distinct.
I actually knew a bunch of WeHo lesbian fuckbois in LA back when they had a lock on DJing the “Cahuenga Corridor” clubs. I’d be surprised if any of the equivalent personalities today weren’t trans men, though.
One interesting thing around Portland these days is no form of personal motorized transport below the Vespa level – this includes underbones, 2-stroke motorcycles, dirt bikes, mini bikes, pedal bikes, rental scooters, e-bikes, and I suppose Segways – has established a norm around not using them drunk.
Wait, no, I bet those guys who go down the street standing with like one wheel between their feet do, they at least wear helmets.
ALT