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jimmawww · 3 years

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Ending E

Someone asked me to explain ending E of Replicant:

It seems that the [machine] network acts as a metaphor for the collective unconscious, the underlying matrix of reality, so pervasive that it appears to go beyond space-time into the past - that is the only way I can rationalize it as aliens don't even invade until ~5000 AD and the [machine] network isn't developed yet. This also makes sense how the network would have Nier’s data as N2 was "formed from the consciousness of the original gestalt". Thematically its the same as the pods rebelling against the system of reality and using their will to bring back the ones they love. As to why it shows as a flower is a ref to Drakengard's flowers or seeds which are typified as apocalyptic events - the origins of which are never hinted at until now. It could be a network immune response to an anomaly, bringing back Nier breached a firewall in the matrix and scheduled the world for destruction by the watchers. Whether the watchers are products of this network or vice versa is open to speculation. My speculation:

The similarities between the watchers and the network match rather well. The watchers (based on the apocryphatic book of enoch btw, read your bible!) keep searching for timelines that have high ‘sustainability’ %, ostensibly for them to retreat to, and so they monitor all of reality and its alternative dimensions - not unlike the [machine] network’s scope shown in ending E. As the network’s goal is entropic evolution I feel its entirely possible the network became so advanced that it transcended space-time into a god-like state we would regard as the watchers who became the stewards of humanity and order, ironically born from the chaos they might oppose. In light of this I have put [ ] around machine as the network may be something much more. Also bolstered how Accord is now acknowledged in Replicant (given that Accord IS a watcher and not another super entity type) - which also makes sense because Taro could argue that Gestalt was a different timeline where she didn’t show up *jazz hands* ooooooo.

Whether ending E is the canon ending/prequel to automata and not another alt timeline is also unclear. It does make sense for Taro from a story context to explain the timetravel event (how did “magic” appear in Spain in 856 AD?) as most writers default to the Azkaban inevitability or a samasara timeloop prison. I had always speculated that the appearance of magic in the Drakengard universe was a divine product of high tech future event which looped in on itself, and now we have such context to argue this. While compelling, I will only hold this out as a theory as I enjoy the uncertainty of the madman’s beautiful and wild ride.

Addendum: Its been pointed out that the simpler explanation is that the network seen in E is actually the human gestalt program. I at first discarded this because it seemed too advanced to be human. However if you factor in the fact that the replicants & shades were made from human-angel tech you could extrapolate it to that level. I am still, however, highly skeptical of this.

#nier #nier replicant #spoilers #ending E

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Attack on Titan Season 4: Questions Part 2 Needs to Answer

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This article contains spoilers for Attack on Titan season 4 part 1. But not for season 4 part 2, or the manga (that we know of).

Many anime come along and leave an undeniable mark on the industry, yet every season of Attack on Titan manages to dramatically increase in quality as well as deepen the series’ scope and themes. Attack on Titan season 4, dubbed as Attack on Titan: The Final Season has pushed these limits more than ever before and the anime’s latest collection of episodes brilliantly play with the audiences’ perception of who they should root for in this increasingly deadly conflict. Attack on Titan season 4 doesn’t just thoughtfully detail how war can twist minds and pollute a nation, but it forces the audience to reckon with Eren Jaeger’s questionable descent into what might be the anime’s greatest villain rather than an underdog hero.

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Attack on Titan: The Final Season lays impressive groundwork for the final battle between the nations of Marley and Eldia, but the end of the season comes with the news that audiences will need to wait until Part 2 to get the full story. Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 will surely be full of even grander twists and surprises than Part 1, but some hints towards what’s coming next have already been teased.

When Is Attack on Titan Season 4 Part 2’s Release Date?

Attack on Titan’s fourth season started with the exciting claim that it’s the “final season,” yet the conclusion of the 16th episode, “Above and Below,” comes with the announcement that this is only half of the story and that a Part 2 is on the way. Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 is promised to arrive at some point in the Winter 2022 anime season with the series’ 76th episode, “Judgment.”

An exact date and episode count has yet to be confirmed, but Attack on Titan: The Final Season adapts around six volumes of the manga across its 16 episodes. Hajime Isayama’s iconic manga is soon about to wrap up and that leaves roughly another six volumes left to adapt. Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 will either be a tight ten episodes, like the approach taken with the second half of season three, or be allowed the room to breathe and end up around the same length as Part 1. When Attack on Titan is completely finished, it should have somewhere between 85 and 91 episodes.

What Is Eren And Zeke’s Master Plan?

The second half of Attack on Titan’s fourth season pulls off the major twist that Eren and Zeke have been working together and have an intricate master plan that they’ve spent years working towards. As the season comes to a close it’s revealed that this plan involves physical contact between Eren and Zeke to trigger the Rumbling, which will unleash major deconstruction on the world as a serious “warning shot.”

The finale explains that Zeke and Eren’s plan is actually more thorough and incorporates a genocide-like approach that will change the shape of the world more than any Titan ever has. The later stages of Eren and Zeke’s plan involves the euthanization or sterilization of all Eldians so that their race will just slowly die out and cease to be a problem since they’ll no longer exist after a few generations. It’s a wild development to everything that’s far more aggressive than an enormous act of destruction or manipulation.

It’s unclear exactly how Zeke intends to carry out the second half of the plan, but Eren and his Founding Titan are integral ingredients. The most chilling aspect of all of this is that Eren and Zeke have convinced themselves that the existence of the Eldian race is the true cause for everything that they’ve been put through. They’ve gone a step further than even their father’s elaborate plan to eliminate the Reisses. They’ve developed a narrative that justifies the extinction of a whole group of people essentially because “they started it” and that hundreds of years of war are just the continual fallout of that opening act.

Characters like Yelena and the Jeagerists have turned to idolize this destructive strategy as the necessary spark to move humanity forward, whereas the surviving members of the Survey Corps and the Marleyan Warriors are determined to make sure that Eren and Zeke’s plan doesn’t come to pass, but to also rip away his Founding Titan power and reshuffle the deck so that they’re the ones that hold more cards in the ultimate end goal to gain control of Paradis Island.

Are Levi And Zeke Still Alive?

The cliffhanger that leads into Attack on Titan: The Final Season’s finale involves an intricate torture that Levi has inflicted upon Zeke that involves a gruesome application of a Thunder Spear. Zeke calls Levi’s bluff and refuses to be a victim. The two of them explode and the episode ends with what appears to be the death of two pivotal characters.

“Above and Below” spends very little time on the fallout of this explosive act. Levi appears to take the brunt of the Thunder Spear, but Zeke’s body is blown to pieces and he’s missing his bottom half. In an explicable act, a rogue Titan approaches Zeke’s dying body, rips open its own abdomen, and then proceeds to shove Zeke inside in an act of Cronenbergian madness. The thought process behind this action isn’t explored nor is there any kind of precedent for this in the series, but the likely assumption is that this is some manner of preservation to keep Zeke alive. If the aim were to absorb Zeke’s Beast Titan powers then he would have just been eaten.

If Zeke does return in a healed or transformed state then it makes the loss of Levi hit even more difficult to accept. This final season has worked hard to create empathy for Zeke, a former villain, but Levi is one of Attack on Titan’s most beloved characters and his mission to take out the Beast Titan also carries the weight of Erwin’s sacrifice, too.

Levi is too important of a character to receive an offscreen death and so he’ll definitely return, but it doesn’t seem that likely that he’ll survive this casualty without being turned into a Titan himself. Starting Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 with Levi’s death would make for a powerful way to drive these final episodes forward and reiterate the stakes.

Will There Be More New Titans?

Attack on Titan: The Final Season debuted several new and amazing Titan designs that made all of the earlier behemoths almost seem lazy in comparison. However, the cliffhanger with Zeke in the Titan belly makes it seem like Part 2 of this final season is interested in digging deeper than ever into Titan lore. The anime has laid the groundwork so that these new episodes can go for broke with the creativity behind these creatures while also redefining what’s considered to be a Titan. That ominous sequence from season two’s opening credits that shows Titans running in tandem with dinosaurs and sperm whales could finally get some proper context as more creatures establish new rules.

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The brief tease that the finale offers towards Part 2 seems to depict Eren standing before a powerful tree of life. This tree appears to represent the bonds that tie Titans and their memories together across generations and it might be full of the secrets that define the Titans. There’s been more of an emphasis on the need for Titans to strategically co-opt each other’s powers. These final episodes might introduce radical new Titans but this tree could offer the ability to access all Titan powers or something even greater.

Is Falco Now Tainted By Zeke’s Spinal Fluid?

Gabi and Falco experience a terrifying reckoning when they’re nearly killed as a result of Gabi’s hand in Sasha Blouse’s murder. Falco suffers an injury from a bottle of wine, which turns out to be infused with Zeke’s spinal fluid, which is just one of many steps in Zeke’s plan to assert control. Falco doesn’t drink the wine, which is a grim fate that befalls many soldiers, but enough of it gets in his mouth to cause concern.

Falco’s an offscreen presence during Part 1’s finale and there’s still worry that he’ll be controlled by Zeke. It feels as if this may be temporary misdirect and a way to make Gabi more vulnerable to Eren’s manipulation, but it’d be a genuinely tense encounter if Gabi is eventually forced to fight against a Zeke-influenced Falco.

What’s To Come Of Historia’s Pregnancy?

Season four of Attack on Titan casually reveals a very pregnant Historia Reiss, which could have drastic ramifications on the second half of the final season. Grisha attempted to kill the Reiss bloodline so that none of the royal family would strive to consume Eren and benefit from mixing their royal blood with his Founding Titan ability. Grisha wasn’t entirely successful in this effort and there are now more complications present since Historia is pregnant with a successor that can carry on this cycle and disrupt what Eren, Zeke, and their father before them, have attempted to put into motion. It’s one of many interconnected branches on these family trees that could ruin Eren’s mission or simply become more of his collateral damage.

One could even argue that the whole reason that Historia’s arbitrary pregnancy was put into motion was to apply pressure on Eren. Ideally this knowledge would leave Eren feeling vulnerable enough regarding his legacy to not go through with the Rumbling and push the world into ruin with his radical mission. Unfortunately, Historia’s actions don’t dissuade Eren and if anything they’ve left him and Zeke more determined than ever to pull off the proper plan that will “fix” the future and end this generational chess match to consume and inherit power.

Will Annie Leonhart Return As A Pivotal Player?

One of the other recurring threads from Attack on Titan’s busy fourth season is that Armin has periodically visited with Annie Leonhart, who’s encased in crystal. Armin has shared stories of the past few years with Annie to keep her up to date and it’s implied that his newfound connection with Annie is a result of Bertholdt’s memories and feelings being filtered through Armin after he inherited his Colossal Titan.

It definitely feels like Attack on Titan is building towards Annie’s awakening so that she can also do her part in this battle royale between Titans. Since her appearances don’t go anywhere in season four’s initial episodes it’ll be a serious shock if she doesn’t play an important role in Part 2, even if it’s just as food for someone else.

Will Gabi Or Falco Inherit Titan Abilities?

A major element of this final season is the competition between the Marleyan Warriors to determine who’s best qualified to inherit Reiner’s Armored Titan. Gabi and Falco are at the frontrunners for this responsibility, albeit for very different reasons. Both of these characters have encountered mass casualties and grown up in tremendous ways.

Gabi and Falco have put in so much work that it only feels natural for them to become Titans, commit even harder, and come at Eren with an unprecedented level of strength as well as the support of their ancestors pumping through their veins. Reiner is still a major player in this ongoing war and so it’d be just as likely at this point for Gabi or Falco to take on the Jaw Titan or Cart Titan from their comrades if it’s absolutely necessary.

Who Will Win The War For Paradis?

The biggest question that’s left for Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 is who will be the winners when this lengthy war comes to a close. “Above and Below” concludes with Eren ready to engage in combat with not only Porco, Pieck, and Reiner’s Titans, but also the collective Marleyan air force. Marley benefits from the bigger numbers and the element of surprise, except it’s unlikely that this war will be concluded in Part 2’s opening installments. Marley has never been more concentrated on Eren’s elimination and Eren, Zeke, and Yelena are prepared to go to questionable lengths in order to secure what they have and “protect” the Founding Titan.

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It’d be easy for the anime’s final episodes to truly embrace Eren’s warped role as a megalomaniacal villain, but even if Eren succeeds or fails it’s tough to view any possible outcome as a victory. A conclusion where both Marley and Eldia are reduced to rubble and a new Titan-less generation is left to pick up the pieces might be the only way that Attack on Titan’s world can find true peace. Answers–along with lots of heartbreak, bloodshed, and wonder–will arrive in Winter 2022.

The post Attack on Titan Season 4: Questions Part 2 Needs to Answer appeared first on Den of Geek.

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theculturedmarxist · 5 years

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Gas the bikes, race war now. Or, Race and Racism as an Historical Process: A Rope of Sand

Racism is not simply a set of beliefs or behaviors which must be discontinued or inhibited. This is a bourgeois conception of racism, which portrays it as a malformed idea as such. If systemic racism is recognized, it is rendered as a malformation within, but not of, the system, which needs must be preserved to facilitate bourgeois society. Ideas in themselves are impotent things. They must be animated by an individual or individuals in order to gain motive force. It’s this animation, this reification, that materializes the idea and places it into a social-historical context. This idea is no longer an idle abstraction, but becomes through its materialization and subsequent action and interaction with its context that creates the idea as a process.

Just as bureaucracy is a materialization of the idea state, so too is the Catholic Church a materialization of the idea of Christianity. Both are ancient concepts, in infancy simple theories for the organization of individuals and groups of individuals, that have through their development affected and been affected by the continuous process of history. A significant portion of humanity’s historical record is a vast library of business receipts. The persecutions of Diocletian; coronation of Charlemagne; the Inquisition: a litany of Christian events that turned the course of history.

Racism too is such a process. Through study, any process can eventually come to be understood to a greater or lesser degree, and with understanding comes a certain amount of predictive ability. Simple processes are easily predictable. You light a match and can assume with relative certainty that it will either burn until it consumes all of its fuel or will otherwise fizzle out. Historical processes tend to be vast, incomprehensibly complicated interactions of innumerable variables which are able to be understood in their entirety vanishingly rarely.

However, even knowing only some of the variables allows for a certain amount of extrapolation. Meteorological forecasting operates on a similar principle. Complex, global processes are studied with as much accuracy as science can allow, which is then translated into a predictive model. Sometimes it doesn’t rain when the model calls for rain. Tornadoes emerge with little warning. But still, for everyday use it suits our needs.

Every process reaches an inevitable conclusion. That does not necessarily imply a terminal point at which the process ends. Often throughout history the resolution is transformative, mutatis mutandis, or evolutionary. The so-called Fall of Rome not being a single, demonstrative event, but a many-centuries long process which caused new systems of social organization to arise where the old systems failed. Western Europe develops along a separate thread than the Byzantine East, two evolutionary paths with a common ancestor.

Racism the idea is a material fact in our society. Its roots are deep in the people and in the state which oversees them. As a system of processes in itself, racism grinds on towards its own inevitable conclusion. We have some idea what possibilities exist there at such a point, transitional, or terminal.

Through the lenses of the racist ideology, we know that:

People belong to discrete “races” determined by physical appearance.

These races have inherent differences which make them ultimately incompatible.

This incompatibility produces separate populations, which must be kept separate in order to prevent cultural and genetic pollution which produces strife. (I wonder if pollution shares a common root with other polis related cognates).

These physical manifestations of racial difference are indicative of superiority or inferiority regarding various traits within those discrete populations.

Inevitably, contact results in conflict, which ultimately ends in the enslavement and/or annihilation of one group or the other.

Whether or not these things are true, they are what people are made to believe in regards to the Hitlerite ideology of race. These are among the messages transmitted whenever the subject of race arises in the Bourgeois media. It is so entrenched that very few, even among Leftist circles, even questions the assumption that there is a fundamental, material difference between White and Black populations. “Asians,” “Mexicans,” “Blacks,” “Whites,” “Natives,” “Arabs,” “Jews,” and so on, aren’t just treated as separate cultural generalizations, but are conceived as being complete, entirely alien species from each other.

This is a reactionary Strasserite conception of our world. Instead of a material analysis of history, its foundations are the fantasies of a racist. It is a reactionary ideology which seeks to replace class struggle as the mover of history with the imaginary conception of race. It isn’t the fact of material accumulation and maintenance that drives history, but the mass delusion of the existence of some sort of “race” and the absurd prophecy of its eventual “perfection.” It’s nonsense, but the conceptual basis for it is the pacemaker regulating the heart of Bourgeois society.

The ultimate conclusion of this sort of ideology is a final, cataclysmic Race War in which the defectives are eliminated in favor of those destined for perfection (if they’re not perfect already).

This idea is in evidence prominently within the so-called “Alt Right.” It isn’t hard to look through any given gathering of these masterminds to find them positively slavering at the mouths. At last, those kike bastards will get what’s coming to them. We’ll finally put those niggers back in their place. The opening of the season on trannie degenerates will be declared a national holiday. Hail God Emperor Trump! For them, this isn’t some far-off prophecy. It’s a conflict in progress, and they’re a people under siege. Every time a cop guns down a black kid, it’s a celebration. Every Jewish massacre is a victory for the Nation.

Humans, in my opinion, tend generally to incline towards humanity, humaneness, towards avoiding conflict rather than seeking it. This isn’t a rosy estimation, but something we see among most animals in nature. Symbolic, ritualized violence is often a substitute for the death match. Even predators tend to kill out of need rather than blood thirst. Unrestrained violence is rarely productive for anyone involved, and often incurs great cost. For normal, healthy individuals, collaboration is preferred over conflict.

For the embryonic Fascists among the Alt-Right, they’ve discarded humanity in favor of death. This apocalyptic conflict isn’t an eventuality to be undone for avoided, but actively pursued. It isn’t an accident of circumstance, but a goal to achieve.

Even aside from this fanatical element, the idea of a coming Race War is gaining purchase generally. Unopposed by a Communist response, it will inevitably continue to develop, with society drifting toward that conclusion. The whole ideology of race and racism works towards this end. Race produces racial animosity, itself a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a positive feedback loop, entrenching perceived divisions, antagonizing its captive constituents. It is corrosive to human and humanity alike.

I’ve been told before that I have a strange fixation on race. I suppose that might be true, because I think it is the principle ideology which must be culturally dismantled for Communism to develop. Even in the “best” of conditions, Racism is destructive. As the ongoing Capitalist crises intensify, Race and Racism can only become absolutely ruinous. I feel pretty secure in saying that, if it came down to some sort of racialized global conflict, “White People” would almost certainly win. It would be a holocaust of indescribable proportions too terrific in cruelty, too Cyclopean in scope to bear contemplating.

This doesn’t exist solely within the realm of possibility or conjecture. Arguably it’s already happening now. Like wounds festering the corruption will spread. It is already spreading.

However.

There is an inoculation to this plague. Communists know it. It has been a central element of Communism since the beginning. The principle of Internationalism is essential, essential. More than labor organization, more than minority liberation, more than the vilification of capital, the Bourgeoisie fears Internationalism the most of all. An international, class conscious proletariat is the death stroke to global capital. Even more than the last century or the one previous, technology like the Internet makes the development of a truly connected global proletariat a terrifyingly immediate potentiality to the bourgeoisie.

Race is the root from which racial animosity springs, and class consciousness strikes directly at that root. The actual, elective solidarity of class consciousness dispels the illusionary consanguinity of nation and race. Race is a sterile ideology that bears no lasting fruit. It rots and withers beneath the illumination of scientific Communism like a carcass in the sun. Its putrid memory doesn’t long remain. It fades with time and new life springs from its death. Nectar gathers instead of poison.

Without this development, racism and racialism, and their material manifestation and progress will continue unimpeded. Race war becomes an ever more likely result of our current circumstances. If it isn’t opposed and undermined with strenuous energy, the conclusion can only be anticipated with foreboding.

Class consciousness disrupts the material process of racism. The affirmation of our factual universal humanity, in opposition to the mythology of national and racial particularity, derails it, disperses it. It is the only environment in which Communism can truly develop and grow, one in which the old identities, roles, categories imposed on humanity by the past are disposed of. We have to kill the irrationality necessary for racism to exist so that rational solidarity, and from it Communist emancipation can develop in its place.

#communism #marxism #racism #race war #a rope of sand

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storyteller0311 · 6 years

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What’s in a Name?

Sacrifice.

Unthinkable.

My Name is Oliver Queen.

Schism.

Lian Yu.

Life Sentence.

The title’s of Arrow’s season finales have ranged from metaphorical to literal over the course of 6 seasons. And, now, with season 6′s finale fast approaching the question is where this year’s title falls on the spectrum of literal to figurative.

The short answer to that question is that we don’t know and won’t for several more weeks. It could go either way. There’s a lot of evidence on both sides. But at the end of the day, chances are that the episode will end up being a little bit of both.

As much as we adore Arrow for all of its many parts – which truly make a fantastic whole – the show, at its core, is and always will be the story of Oliver Queen.

And, in one way or another, so too have the titles of the season finales been about Oliver in some way.

Sacrifice

The title of 1x23 comes literally from something that Felicity says to Lance about how much the vigilante has had to sacrifice to protect Starling City. But it also encapsulates an entire season of Arrow, where Oliver has sacrificed his entire existence for his cause from his family and friends to his happiness and safety. And now, with the Undertaking in progress, it looks like that sacrifice could have been for nothing. And while Oliver, Dig, and Felicity do succeed, Tommy dies, the city is partially in ruins, hundreds perish, Moira Queen confesses her involvement to save others, and Oliver ends up leaving. Sacrifices abound.

Unthinkable

While the title of 2x23 is much more metaphorical than its predecessor, it is by no means narrower in its scope. Once again, the episode’s title comes directly from something Felicity says when at the end she remarks that any real action stemming from his not-so-faux declaration of love in an effort to fool Slade was “unthinkable.” The unthinkable theme extends beyond Oliver and Felicity though. It’s a theme of the entire episode in which multiple people advise Oliver to do something that to him is unthinkable: break his promise to honor Tommy and kill Slade. It also is a nod to other events that in many ways were previously “unthinkable,” namely Lyla’s pregnancy and Thea leaving with Malcolm. In the end, part of the unthinkable theme is that Oliver does in fact succeed in his mission. He saves the city without killing Slade.

My Name is Oliver Queen

Unlike 1x23 and 2x23, the title of 3x23 comes directly from Oliver when he asserts that he is, in fact, not Al Sahim in the episodes opening moments. This episode is the culmination of sorts of a chapter in Oliver’s journey. He’s been at war with himself since 3x01, yearning for something more (Felicity) in his life but unable to see a way to make that happen while still being the Arrow. By episode’s end, Oliver has swung from one extreme to the other, abandoning his mantle as the Arrow and leaving Star City with Felicity to explore his identity as Oliver Queen, the man. Not Ollie the boy, or the castaway, or the vigilante, or the Hood, or the Arrow. And in doing so, it proves to Oliver that he is capable of being Oliver Queen without the mask and that he can be happy as that man too.

Schism

After taking a season off, 4x23 gives us our 3rd instance in which the episode’s title is voiced by Felicity. While Oliver’s decision to embrace his identity as Oliver Queen in 3x23 was definitely a step in the right direction, it wasn’t exactly a perfect decision. Season 4 underscores how Oliver equates his role as the Arrow with darkness, darkness that he thought he left behind when he left Star(ling) City in 3x23. But his and Felicity’s return to Star City and his return to life as the now Green Arrow has, in his mind, allowed that darkness to return. This is exacerbated by the myriad of events throughout Season 4 that by 4x23 Oliver associates with his darkness and the possibility that it’s tainting those around him: John killing Andy, his decisions regarding William and Felicity and the end of their engagement, Felicity’s paralysis, Laurel’s death, etc. By 4x23, Oliver is living 2 different lives: one in the light as the mayoral candidate, and one in the darkness as the Green Arrow. He isn’t able to reconcile the two halves of that whole, and as Felicity tells him, he is capable of being both – of being the man that killed Damien Darhk in cold blood and also inspired the city as simply Oliver Queen. There’s a schism within him, something that by the end of the episode, he is able to acknowledge – even if he isn’t comfortable with it.

It’s also important to note that the title of this episode directly ties to the literal landscape of Team Arrow by the end of Season 4. John and Thea leave, Oliver and Felicity remain but are still broken up, Laurel is dead, and Lance leaves the city with Donna.

Lian Yu

Of all the season finales, this is the easy one. (Or is it?)

Lian Yu is literally the location of the entire episode. It is the reason the episode exists. It is the culmination of 5 years of flashbacks and seeks to put to rest Oliver’s experience from the moment the Queen’s Gambit sank to the moment he returned to Starling City in 1x01. BOOM.

...But, it’s not that easy, is it? Season 5 does everything in its power to make Oliver question those 5 years away and then the following 5 years back in Star(ling). It makes him question his mission, his humanity. Was his mission valid? Is it still? Is he a monster? Season 5 serves as the bookend to a part of Oliver’s story. But it also is a true continuation of the theme of Season 4 – of Oliver’s deep battle with the darkness. And it is a story of fathers and sons, which effectively brings the first 5 years of Arrow to a close (harkening back to Robert Queen’s sacrifice) and launch Arrow into a new chapter with Oliver now the father to William.

By the end of 5x23, Oliver is once again left in a state of torture where everyone around him, everyone he loves, is at the mercy of Adrian Chase’s goal to make Oliver see himself as that monster, as darkness personified, as destructive to everything he touches.

Life Sentence

So, here we are at 6x23. Life Sentence.

This could go a lot of ways. Literal. Figurative. Directly speaking to Oliver’s story. Speaking to multiple stories. Probably a bit of everything.

So, what do we know? We know that Oliver is in turmoil. He’s under indictment and will have been to trial by the time 6x23 airs. He’s lost his team, and it probably will not be reassembled by 6x23. And we know that although Oliver is going to be going it alone, he values his family above all else.

What else do we know? Diggle is at a crossroads. Black Siren’s story needs to be resolved, and if rumors are true that resolution may come in the form of a transfer to Legends of Tomorrow and most likely will involve Lance. Felicity and Curtis seem to be setting their differences aside and delving back into their company as Felicity’s tenure as Overwatch is, at least temporarily, over.

But, there’s still more to take into account. The powers that be have given mixed messages in the past several weeks regarding what is coming. We know, though, that they are the masters of spin and we can’t really trust what they’re saying. Because even if someone guesses spot on what is going to happen, they’re not going to look at us and say “you’re absolutely right!” What we do know if that something is happening that cannot be taken back.

Obviously, for Oliver, life sentence most literally translates into a conviction and a prison term.

But, prison isn’t the only kind of life sentence. Metaphorically, a life sentence could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Being a parent is a life sentence.

Revealing your secret identity is a life sentence.

Death is a life sentence.

Marriage could be equated as a life sentence.

But, if we’re specifically talking about Oliver, and we’re remembering that “can’t be taken back” criteria, a life sentence in prison is reversible and if it happens, we know it’s going to be reversed.

So, what can’t be taken back that also can be equated as a life sentence?

Death

Reveal as Green Arrow

So, one thing we can rule out is that Oliver isn’t dying. But someone else could. Who? My money’s on Lance as it would serve a Black Siren redemption story line and usher her onto Legends.

I can’t include becoming a parent in here because I don’t think the announcement of a pregnancy quite fits the criteria. Also, that kind of life sentence for Oliver has already happened (William) and if Felicity sees herself as glue, it’s kinda happened for her too as she embraces her role as step-mom.

My money is on Oliver revealing (or it being revealed without his permission) that he is the Green Arrow. It matches the criteria of something that a) can’t be taken back and b) changes the show at its very core. It’s also, obviously, a life sentence. Can’t put that back in the box...

And I think when you look at the arc of Oliver’s story, particularly over the course of the last 3 seasons, it makes the most narrative sense and I really hope it actually happens. Oliver has been struggling since Season 4 with accepting that he is a good person as both Oliver Queen and as the Green Arrow. That they can coexist in one man, and that that man can be a husband and a father and the Mayor and a hero. Thea’s departure and Oliver’s decision that he can’t give up being the Green Arrow are all pointing in this direction. Oliver owning that he is the Green Arrow would be a culmination of that arc. It’s time to finally put the schism from Season 4 to rest.

It’s time to finally unite all the parts of Oliver Queen.

@almondblossomme @callistawolf @melsanfo @eloquence-of-felicities @jbuffyangel @klarolicityswan @nalla-madness @oliverdant @ruwithmeguys @relativelyobsessedfangirl @smoakandarrow @skcolicity

#arrow #arrow spoilers #arrow speculation #arrow 6x23 #arrow 6x23 spoilers #arrow 6x23 speculation

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thebandcampdiaries · 3 years

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Saint Thomas X introducing a brand new studio album: INTROVERTIGO.

A hybrid combination of Psychedelic music, Alt-Pop, Soul, and Country Rock.

January 2021: Saint Thomas X is an artist and songwriter whose music is incredibly diverse. In fact, his songs blur the lines between a wide variety of influences and style definitions. From the earthy sounds of country music and alt-rock, down to the lush atmosphere of psychedelic music, anything goes. Recently, Saint Thomas X took to the internet to release a brand new album titled INTROVERTIGO.

This release is a very ambitious undertaking for the artist, because it really captures his creativity and broad vision, highlighting his way of capturing different sonic aesthetics and merging them all into one type of sound. The sheer scope of the production will immediately capture your imagination. The music has a larger-than-life feel, almost hitting the speaker in a big cinematic way. These sounds are very evocative, and create a strong texture, rather than just focusing on a melodic line to remember. The fact that there are many layers to this release really allow the artist to achieve an extra sense of depth, making for a strong and balanced tone.

The first song, “Get Money,” reminds me of some amazing 60s bands, including The Kinks or The Byrds, but it also makes me think of some of the best Tom Waits records, especially in the sound of the guitars, which have such a nice retro vibe in the verses. The second song on this release, “Grudges and Graves,” is a really exciting song, which combines an alt-rock flavor with a psychedelic twist. In particular, it makes me think of Humbug-era Arctic Monkeys, as well as some of the most psychedelic Black Keys and Queens Of The Stone Age recordings. The next song, “Supernova,” is a beautifully atmospheric song which starts off with a vintage-sounding synthesizer, perfectly matching the incredible feel of the album, especially as the song gets more of a psych-garage vibe. The fourth song is actually the title track itself, and it is not surprising that the whole album is actually named after it!

The fifth track is known as “Bliss in the Abyss,” and it is perhaps one of the most haunting and atmospheric songs on the record. It’s ballad-like atmosphere reminds me of The Pixies, or other alt-country bands such as Lucero, Drive-By Truckers or Calexico, only to mention a few. The next track, “Bastards of Babylon” is one of the true highlights on this album. I love how accomplished the arrangement is and how it all comes together in terms of focus and vision. The song beings with a nice vocal melody, and it has a slow, dense groove with a blues feel to it.

“Source of Light” is another heavy-hitter, with some exciting riffs that actually make me think of early Nirvana, No Means No, Meat Puppets or even The Melvins, only to mention but a few. I really love the reverberated guitar leads in the background, which kind of sound like ghosts of whales to me, I love the spectral and nocturnal edge that this one brings to the table. Interestingly, the concept of the album is actually a mini-opera, which was initially titled “The Bitter Suite.”

The story is centered around a homeless person, who is finally coming to terms with his struggles with addiction, mental illness, and alienation. He addresses imaginary flocks of disciples, while diving deep into his self-destructive patterns and coming up with some revolutionary existential theories that deal with huge topics, even dating back to the Big Bang and the existence of the universe as a whole. At the end of the day, we are all connected to something deeper and greater, and we are all literally part of the entropic energy of the Universe, Black Holes, and everything within.

Ultimately, this release is highly recommended if you are a fan of artist such as Pink Floyd, Elton John, Merle Haggard, Kurt Vile, Drag The River, Dead Rituals, Lucero, East River Pipe, Tame Impala, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Soundgarden, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, only to mention but a few. Due to his anti-social media stance, you will not find the artist on many of today’s ubiquitous social media sites. This is a very brave, yet highly commendable choice in this day and age, especially for an independent artist!However, you can learn more about the artist via Youtube, or better yet, let the songs tell you the rest of the story and check out the artist’s sound right away.Find out more about Saint Thomas X, and do not miss out on INTROVERTIGO, which is currently available on the web.

https://open.spotify.com/album/1KXOLYJiA0z7irKquC0JcZ?si=H9jcF6XLQG2uITGlfd_CNw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQVs7zL1nJo

http://saintthomasx.com/

We also had the opportunity to catch up with the artist with a few questions: keep reading for more!

I love how you manage to render your tracks so personal and organic. Does the melody come first, or do you focus on the beat the most?

I usually write the melodies (Verses/choruses/bridges) first and then apply lyrics. I always have the tempo in mind when doing this so the short answer would be I do all of it at the same time-ish.

Do you perform live? If so, do you feel more comfortable on a stage or within the walls of the recording studio?

"I've been in 5 bands and done 3 different recording and writing projects that span 9 records and 81 songs. In my opinion playing live is overrated. I think it's great if you are in a band with 3-5 people who are like minded and have the same goals and aspirations but what it always boils down to is, the primary writer ends up being the boss, employer and driver to the rest of the band. Writers, artists, producers, are usually innovators and trade musicians are usually adaptors. Writers don't 'practice', they just write. They practice by doing. They don't take lessons, practice theory or chord progressions and rehearse.

Those things are unimportant to us. The constant state of creation and making is what matters most. Not practicing to do that someday. So managing that dynamic with kindness and patience is difficult. It's necessary to getting things accomplished but it' a bummer most of the time. At the end of the day, I get much better results from writing, producing, singing and playing bass and doing some aux percussion than collaborating with trade musicians. 75% of the time I am beat boxing better drum patterns than drummers write. I sing melodies to wanky overplaying guitar players because they want to shred instead of write good melodies and when I played with other bass players in the past, they would play root notes and almost never write a melody unless I demanded they did and then had to sing them the bass melody to do so. Same with keys players. I much prefer paying people to play what I want as opposed to hearing what they think sounds good. Because it almost never sounds good to me. I would collab but I cannot afford nor do I have access to the musicians I actually want to collaborate with. And writing and producing are not about instrumental proficiency.

It's about taste and aesthetic. I write all of my songs by writing the vocal melody first because that is what good pop music is, first and foremost, a great vocal melody, then smart lyrics with an appropriate back beat. pop songs don't have to have guitar, organic or machine drums or bass or keys. BUT THEY HAVE TO HAVE A GREAT MELODY. There's no such thing as a great song that doesn't have vocals and good storytelling. But none of those other things are required in whole, or in part for good popular music of any genre.

I've never had any designs on accolades, fortune or fame. It's not why I create. I write to express myself and I record to catalog my songs. All of my favorite artists openly detested touring and playing live. I do too. None of my favorite songwriters and producers were trade musicians.

They are/were excellent melodists, writers and storytellers with exceptionally gifted ears for soundscapes and production. The art of making music is very different than the trade of playing live music. I hold a far higher value on writing and developing material than I do performing it. I don't enjoy crowds, travel, cat herding, loud spaces, stress, and small sums of money to endure it all. I'm not concerned with show-business. Performance art is for extroverts, entertainers and social trade musicians who crave adoration and human interaction. I enjoy the catharsis of writing alone and recording with as few people as possible. So I do that.

If you could only pick one song to make a “first impression” on a new listener, which song would you pick and why?

It would have to be Get Money or Egodeath. Apologies for tying between the two. But both of these tracks exemplify my personal struggles and pains to stay alive and create. Get money is about the things we all do to make ends meet and get by. Egodeath is about keeping your anger in check and not getting too heated about anything in life because that inevitably leads to disaster.

What does it take to be “innovative” in music?

What a great question. I’d always side with not being formulaic. SO many people are just doing what others do. 25 years ago I invented Psychedelic Gospel Pop Soul Country. It sounds funny but it’s an amalgamation of those elements and genres. If I were to just focus on ONE of those styles it would probably less interesting and unique. I’ve also injected various forms of Power Pop, Alternative and Trip-Hop.

Any upcoming release or tour your way?

I’ve released 6 records in less than 4 years. My next release will be out shortly. It’s called; Mars in Your Eyes. It will be a 9-10 song mini rock opera.

Anywhere online where curious fans can listen to your music and find out more about you?

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4PGbnGDGUql8JELXNmtvZw?si=I5oM9d7kQWyBbGuzJeE7_w

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF7qDV8040q4CrH96e_X3EQ

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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Between Gods and Rats, the Moynihan Train Hall Is a Temple to Modern Mediocrity

There are three types of photos of the original Penn Station in midtown Manhattan, the one that got knocked down in the mid-1960s. The first type are photos of it being built. The second are those of it being used throughout the first half of the 20th century. Finally, there are the photos of it being destroyed in the 1960s.

As it happens, these periods roughly coincide with three definitive eras of New York City lore. The early 1900s is when modern New York became itself, the early-to-mid 1900s were arguably its peak, and the post 1960s saw its rapid decline. In this sense, the photos of Penn Station are a handy starting point to understanding the city's 20th Century story.

It is a story that doesn't end as much as it sloppily devolves. In 2019, New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman likened the historic preservation movement—born from the Penn Station rubble—to collective pessimism. The destruction of the old Penn Station "flipped the optimistic narrative" of the city, Kimmelman argued. People began to assume that anything good that was lost would no longer be replaced with something better. Instead, they felt a growing sense that what came next would be worse. The main goal was no longer to build back better, but to cling to what we have.

And so it is in a sense fitting that the Moynihan Train Hall, the city's first real attempt to replace a portion of what was lost some 55 years ago, opened on January 1, 2021, the day after one of the most dire, harrowing years New York has ever faced. If buildings can be narrative-shifters, this is quite the timing.

That's a lot of pressure to put on a building. Moynihan could never be a true Penn Station successor, much less change the tune for New York City. For starters, the old Penn Station is still there underneath Madison Square Garden, just as it has been for the last half-century, and will continue to be used by hundreds of thousands of people every day whenever we return to some semblance of normalcy. All New Jersey Transit riders will still descend under the Garden. Many Long Island Railroad riders will, too. Like the original Penn Station, which was for Pennsylvania Railroad customers first and foremost, Moynihan is largely for Amtrak riders.

The new train hall—it is not accurate to call it a new station, as the tracks and platforms are the same—also occupies a different physical space than the old Penn Station. It is across the street, in part of the old James Farley Post Office Building, which was constructed just a few years after the original Penn Station, designed by the same architects, and intentionally mimicked the Penn Station Beaux Arts style (it received landmark status in 1966, thanks to the preservation movement Penn's destruction ushered in, so the original facade has not been altered).

But the main reason Moynihan cannot and will never match the original Penn Station is because it is an ornamental decoration to an otherwise private office building.

The train hall may be the headliner, but it is just a part of the Farley Post Office rehabilitation. The United States Postal Service sold the building to the state, which then leased it for 99 years to private developers. Per the lease, 475,000 of the total 1,112,000 square feet—less than half—are for the train hall, LIRR and Amtrak facilities, and "transportation-oriented retail space." That's much smaller than the massive, eight-acre old Penn Station, which was on a similarly sized plot. The remaining 637,000 square feet have been leased as office space to Facebook, plus some 70,000 square feet of developed outdoor roof space for the social media giant.

This was not merely a happy accident for the private developers, but in many ways the key that unlocked the entire project. The state authority that orchestrated the plan, which has been decades in the making, is called the New York State Urban Development Corporation, otherwise known as Empire State Development. As ESD vaguely alludes to in an environmental impact document outlining the project's history, Amtrak originally proposed using most of the Farley building for a new Penn Station site in the 1990s, but "further refinement of the project scope and more detailed cost estimates revealed that the project would only succeed through a funding partnership between the federal, state, and city governments and the integration of a private development component." Only once "economic opportunities afforded by the utilization of the unused development rights associated with the Farley Complex" did the project finally get off the ground and through the gears of bureaucratic morass.

The project's backers have argued the private development was the only way to make it viable, and so it is either a smaller train hall with lots of office space or no train hall at all. But this, like many other aspects of urban development schemes, demonstrates a lamentable lack of imagination. The total cost, which includes funding from Amtrak, a federally funded agency, was $1.6 billion, a lot of money by any measure but hardly insurmountable for a project with local, state, and federal financing, and about half of the original Penn Station's cost in inflation-adjusted dollars. Like so many other redevelopment projects in the city over recent decades, this whole project is not about palaces by and for the people. It is about "economic development," and the people get a little something for the trouble of selling off a massively valuable real estate asset that we used to own.

The bar of what to do with underutilized publicly-owned spaces is so low that the mere presence of the Moynihan Train Hall can, justifiably, be hailed as a victory of sorts. Steve Hutkins, who has documented the gradual sell-off of American post offices at his website Save the Post Office told Motherboard via email that "this fate is a lot better than what happened to many other historic post offices, like the one in the Bronx that got sold to a developer who never finished the project. Ditto for the Venice, CA post office, sold to a movie producer for his offices and now sitting empty for years. Selling off buildings is the worst; repurposing them in ways that the public can still use them is much better."

So, it is with this it-could-have-been-worse spirit I will attempt to look on the bright side for a minute. The hall does what it can, and it does it well enough. Without venturing too far into architecture criticism, a field in which I am wholly unqualified, I found the train hall about what it promised to be. It is sleek, modern, and bright. Without a doubt, it is a vast improvement over the contemporary Penn Station experience, but that is a bar so low it has been buried under a sports arena. For this sometimes-Amtrak traveler's money, the biggest upgrade over Penn Station is probably not in the main hall, but in the bathrooms. They feel legitimately fancy and have those slick three-faucet setups—which Penn Station got during a 2018 facelift—where the first one is for soap, the second for water, and the third a hand dryer. Considering the bathrooms are some of the most frequently-used facilities at train stations, this is no small deal. Doubly so considering the dearth of publicly available bathrooms in Midtown Manhattan and the historical state of Penn Station bathrooms as the single worst room in the entire city.

Fancy new bathrooms oooooooo Photo: Aaron Gordon

Yet, it seemed obvious to me this is not a building that was designed to be a train hall, but rather an office building that happens to have a train hall in it. To start, the main hall itself—from which riders are supposed to converge and access the platforms—is simply not very large. The size struck me as so inadequate for a major transportation hub that this basic observation is what led me to investigate the lease terms in the first place. Even on New Years Day, in which virtually nobody was using it for its intended purpose but a few hundred architectural tourists wandered about, the station felt populated, even crowded.

In theory, the building is supposed to accommodate some 225,000 passengers a day. I find that difficult to envision. The passenger waiting area is smartly designed with modern wooden benches and could maybe fit two train cars' worth of people. As of now, there is literally nowhere else in the station to sit. Other than that waiting area and the exclusive airline-style lounge on the second floor for Acela passengers, there is a total absence of seating of any kind. (On the one hand, that is also the case for Grand Central, where the only seating is in the food hall downstairs, and a food hall is opening at Moynihan later this year. On the other hand, there's less of a need for seating at a commuter rail station like Grand Central where riders do not buy tickets for specific trains that in theory depart frequently versus an Amtrak facility.)

Still, the lack of seating is perhaps a secondary concern to the limited access from the hall to the trains themselves. From the main hall, there is just a single escalator, wide enough for one person, down to each track. This, almost assuredly, will result in the same long, snaking lines and masses of humanity Northeast Corridor riders are already too familiar with, the kind of lines that clog spaces much larger than the Moynihan hall.

Those not wishing to wait in a long escalator line can circumvent the main hall entirely, take the stairs down to the lower hallway, and then another set of stairs to the platform. But if the smartest, most efficient way to board the train is to circumvent the main hall entirely in a roundabout fashion, then what does that say about the train hall to begin with?

Mostly, this is not the building's fault. There is an insurmountable geographical problem: the train platforms are, for the most part, not underneath the train hall. As I mentioned above, these are the same tracks and platforms that stretch from Seventh to Eighth Avenue Penn Station riders have been using for decades. But the new hall is a block over, between Eighth and Ninth. Only a small portion of the platform extends beyond Eighth Avenue underneath Moynihan, creating a natural bottleneck for anyone who wants to enter or exit through the fancy new building.

This problem was perfectly illustrated in a station directory map in the train hall itself:

Photo: Aaron Gordon

At the very bottom, you can see a faded diagram of a train stretching mostly underneath Penn Station, with only the very edge of one end below Farley. Needless to say, there is something fundamentally flawed about a train hall that only just barely connects to the train itself.

This spatial problem encapsulates not just the Moynihan Train Hall's conundrum, but a lot of our other problems too: it is the public infrastructure we get when we try to fix the mistakes of the past without fully reckoning with what the mistakes actually were. The problem with Penn Station never had anything to do with the Farley Post Office. The problem was, of course, the demolition of Penn Station, which bathed passengers in light and grandeur from the second they stepped off the train, an architectural achievement that can only be accomplished by having the station above the actual tracks. The problem with the current Penn Station is, of course, the absence of an actual train station.

We will never top this. Photo: Library of Congress

And here we arrive at the ultimate question the Moynihan Train Hall poses: should we be happy with it because it exists? When opening the hall, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Moynihan is "a testament and a monument to the public and they deserve the best and they can produce the best." For all its nice touches and pleasant aesthetics, Moynihan is a middle ground inextricably linked to two extremes: the majestic yet tragic glory of the original Penn Station and the squalid tangled cavern of the current Penn Station. It is, to paraphrase the infamous Vin Scully quote about the new and old Penns station, somewhere between gods and rats. By definition, Moynihan was always going to be better than the worst and worse than the best.

The destruction of the original Penn Station helped instill a bleak conservatism over the city, but the Moynihan Train Hall offers neither doom nor gloom. Instead, it offers a quiet acquiescence to the forces that have reshaped New York City since Penn's destruction, a kind of surrender to the "privately owned public spaces" (POPS) in office tower lobbies in exchange for tax breaks or turning streetspaces into "business improvement districts" (BIDs) that often exacerbate inequality and erode at the meaning of an actual public space. POPS, BIDs, and all manners of public-private partnerships do more for the people than selling out entirely—or doing nothing at all—but it will never get us another Penn Station or Farley Building. There are plenty more Moynihans where that came from.

In a deeper sense, the Moynihan model encapsulates the flaws of Cuomo's pragmatic optimism about the power of government. "Faux progressives frustrate the public by raising false expectations and by failing to improve matters," he wrote in his hastily published book. As Gothamist's Christopher Robbins noted in his review, "Cuomo never states what 'real progressives' will do, just that they will do it." It's a neat rhetorical trick; the right thing to do is the thing that happened, meaning whatever didn't happen was wrong. By that logic, I am wrong to say that the train hall's existence is not enough, that we lost something important by selling the rest of the building off, that with each sale, we make it even harder to save what little we have left under the public's name, that the 700,000 square feet of the Farley Post Office that used to be ours is yet another capitulation to the very impulses that destroyed the original Penn Station to begin with.

I left Moynihan with no particular desire to ever seek it out again, in the way I would never willingly hang out at an airport, even if the airport has solid food options. Walking down Broadway to sit in Madison Square Park, I thought of one old photo of Penn Station that doesn't fit neatly in the three-part structure. Taken on July 6, 1965, the photo is of passengers waiting, reading, looking at one another. Fourteen suitcases are arranged neatly on the floor. A wrecking ball dangles in the background, waiting for the people to leave. The building is doomed, but it is still there.

Specifically, I thought about how at the time, this was billed as progress. The people were told Penn Station was too expensive to maintain, a relic of an antiquated era. Madison Square Garden and One Penn Plaza were the future, they said. It was, they said, unrealistic to keep Penn Station around.

I suppose, to a certain type of person at the time, advocating for the city or state to step in and purchase the old Penn Station for the $50 million for which its air rights were sold and rehabilitate it could have been rephrased as "raising false expectations by failing to improve matters." In hindsight, it would have cost substantially less in inflation-adjusted dollars than the entire Moynihan project (assuming rehabilitating it would cost less than 1.2 billion in today's dollars). That same type of person would likely be telling us today about the false expectations of redeveloping the Farley Post Office into a truly public space. But I am not that type of person. Those 700,000 square feet could have been anything.

Between Gods and Rats, the Moynihan Train Hall Is a Temple to Modern Mediocrity syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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oliverarditi · 5 years

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Solitary movement through a hauntological palimpsest

Aloy moves alone through her world. Geralt in the Witcher series is constantly bounded and motivated by his social relations and obligations, despite his fundamentally ronin status; in contrast, although the protagonist of Horizon Zero Dawn is provided by her back-story with a social context that explains who she is and why, the earliest stages of the narrative excise her of all social obligations and close relationships. It is to the credit of the writers that they take the time to show how this is socially possible, within the customs of her tribe, but this liberty accorded to Aloy is clearly a pretext for the player’s freedom within the game’s beautifully realised open world. Also in contrast to the Witcher games, side quests lack narrative complexity, and almost every secondary character is lacking in depth. Even the Witcher’s over-sexualised female companions, placed at the erotic convenience of both character and (implicitly male) player, are much more convincingly drawn characters, with the semblance of their own lives and motivations, but in Horizon Zero Dawn the only character that really gets to sing her song is Aloy.

Lucky then, that it is a song worth singing. Her courage, compassion and intelligence will capture the hearts of most players before they’ve known her for an hour, even if, unlike me, they do not have a daughter of roughly Aloy’s age. Although the writers must clearly be given their due for the way in which Aloy responds to her experiences and environment, there is little development in her character from beginning to end of the tale, and the majority of the credit for her striking charisma belongs to the voice acting of Ashly Burch. Burch is known as a specialist in voice acting for games, although I’m only familiar with one of her other roles; in Horizon Zero Dawn she speaks with the same kind of quiet precision deployed by Mark Rylance in his portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall (and memorably satirised by Ben Miller in S3:E3 of Upstart Crow). This proves a very apt match for Aloy’s character traits, which include an unshakeable ability to focus, relentless determination, icy unflappability, and razor-sharp mental and physical capacities. Despite her seeming perfection, or perhaps because of it, the player still feels her vulnerability in the face of circumstances that are both global and apocalyptic in scope, and it is her mourning for the destructive loss of the world that was (our world, that is to say) that gives the game its narrative heart.

Horizon Zero Dawn is set roughly a thousand years in the future, in a world populated by tribal peoples who know nothing of our times. They have some technical capacities, based around the scavenging of ancient or discarded technology, but live for the most part somewhere between the neolithic and the medieval, in terms of both material and social culture. They share the world with a curiously reduced palette of land vertebrates, and a large number of advanced robots of mysterious origin, which fill the ecological niches that, in our age, belong to the larger animals. These robots are routinely hunted for the parts and materials which can be scavenged from them, although some are so large and so well equipped with military equipment that hunting them is rarely practical for those less remarkably skilled than Aloy. Finding out how this state of affairs came about, and preventing it from becoming precipitately worse, becomes Aloy’s goal, by way of investigating her own mysterious origins.

It is this hunting of the machines that gives the game its heart as a game, and which makes it as compelling as the Witcher, which is far more engaging on a narrative level, but which can be played with little more than ham-fisted button-mashing (on the difficulty levels I tend to choose in my dotage, at any rate). Each machine must be hunted in the correct way, with the correct weapons, although it should also be said that there are usually several correct ways to complete any gameplay objective. I have to admit that I usually play for the story, in this kind of visually accomplished AAA game, but with HZD the gameplay grabbed me and didn’t release me until long after I had completed the narrative. That this nuanced and multi-levelled hunting and combat takes place against the backdrop of a beautifully rendered version of what our material culture might look like after a millennium of total neglect gives HZD its peculiar and engaging affective character, a kind of kinetic melancholy.

As the big secrets of the backstory are revealed we are drawn deeper into the narrative, whose most compelling elements turn out to be the fragmentary lives preserved from earlier times in the media snippets that are scattered throughout the world. Aloy has a mission, in terms of responding urgently to events that are emergent in her own time, but her progress through the world is as driven by curiosity as much as anything else, and by a need to recover lost lives from their documentary traces. The past exists liminally in HZD, poised between presence and absence, as in Jacques Derrida’s concept of ‘hauntology’. In fact, it sometimes feels as though W.G. Sebald had written a Tomb Raider game, its protagonist pursuing not treasure or power, but an ineffable palimpsest of forgotten lives. Although HZD does not really stand up to its competition in terms of characterisation and interpersonal drama, this combination of uniquely compelling gameplay, and a pensive, hauntological fascination with the frailty of memory, both crystallised through the person of its precisely delineated protagonist, makes the game, for me, one of the AAA genre’s most complex and moving works of art.

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uni-tierra-califas · 7 years

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[Unitierracalifas] UT Califas Democracy Ateneo, 9-23-17, 2.00-5.00 p.m

Compañerxs:

We will convene the Democracy Ateneo this coming Saturday, September 23, 2017 in San Jose at Casa de Vicky (792 E. Julian St., San Jose) from 2.00-5.00 p.m. to resume our regularly scheduled reflection and action space and to explore some of the questions and struggles mentioned below and raised by the current conjuncture we find ourselves.

As we prepare to reconvene the Uni-Tierra Califas Democracy Ateneo (Saturday, September 23), Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Trump administration's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). The decision impacts over 800,000 recipients, or Dreamers, with the threat of deportation an act that, paradoxically, will come at a high cost for the US —an estimated $60 billion in lost revenues and some $280 billion over ten years. Overlooked in this equation is the 11 million folks who are here and who contribute to the nation's well-being. More to the point, Trump's recent action comes in the wake of his imbroglio resulting from his defense of of the white supremacists and neo-nazis responsible for the reprehensible violence in Charlottesville, Virginia just weeks earlier. In addition, his decision is just days after the very prominent pardon of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a long-time Trump supporter celebrated for his defiant acts of racial profiling directed at immigrants and the Arizona ethnic Mexican community as a whole. (see, John Oliver, "Joe Arpaio: Last Week Tonight") The attack on DACA and the immigrant rights community and by extension the entire ethnic Mexican community also follows the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, a thousand year weather event that not only exposed dramatic levels of inequality faced by undocumented workers in this country, but also revealed how historically marginalized communities are made even more invisible. Texas' Latin@s, for example, were confronted by a triple threat: the hurricane, implementation of Texas' SB4, and dismantling of the DACA program.

Throughout the country people are mobilizing. Immigrant rights activists and their allies have been taking to the streets in anticipation of Trump's announcement and since to urge Congress to formally put provisions in place to support DACA recipients and to find a way to roll back Trump's vitriol against the undocumented community. The mobilizations in favor of DACA joined folks already out in great numbers confronting white supremacist and neo-nazi fascist hate groups. The nation as a whole knows what antifa means, historically and politically, even if the mainstream media insists on criminalizing groups committed to confronting fascism. And, not surprisingly these are fascist groups who have been emboldened by who Ta-Nehisi Coates calls America's first white president. For Coates, President Trump embodies white supremacy. It is worth quoting Coates at length:

"The scope of Trump's commitment to whiteness is matched only by the depth of popular disbelief in the power of whiteness. We are now being told that support for Trump’s 'Muslim ban,' his scapegoating of immigrants, his defenses of police brutality are somehow the natural outgrowth of the cultural and economic gap between Lena Dunham’s America and Jeff Foxworthy’s. The collective verdict holds that the Democratic Party lost its way when it abandoned everyday economic issues like job creation for the softer fare of social justice. The indictment continues: To their neoliberal economics, Democrats and liberals have married a condescending elitist affect that sneers at blue-collar culture and mocks the white man as history’s greatest monster and prime-time television’s biggest doofus. In this rendition, Donald Trump is not the product of white supremacy so much as the product of a backlash against contempt for white working-class people. (see, Coates, "The First White President")

Thus, it is absolutely vital to be out in the streets confronting all manifestations of white supremacy and fascism, whether it be jack-booted in neo-nazi gear, cloaked in preppy polo shirts, or hidden behind the blue suits and red ties common of bureaucrats and politicians. Yet, how do we insure our resistance is not consumed in and with the spectacle? How do we defy and engage without losing site of what the very purpose of the spectacle has been from the outset?

The struggle for democracy, long subdued by Western discourses of representative government, has taken a critical turn this past year. Beginning in October of 2016 the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Ejercito Zapatista Liberation Nacional (EZLN) launched a new initiative to focus the plight of Indigenous peoples throughout Mexico and make it the center of the political discussion. Yet, it is more than that, since it is not just to highlight the struggle of the Indigenous but to draw attention to the peril that all of us confront as we resist the daily violences, both material and symbolic, of this particular phase of capitalism. The proposal invites all of us to re-evaluate how we are or have been organized in our communities. How we are either seduced by the spectacle, that is the more general spectacle of capitalist consumption or the more specific spectacles of elections, etc. It also asks us to interrogate what challenges we face as we are confronted by what appears to be the dissolution of capitalism, the crumbling of the nation-state, and the end of patriarchy.

Those Indigenous communities who resist do so at great risk to their individual and collective well-being as the assassinations of the 43 students at Ayotzinapa illustrates. Thus, the current CNI-EZLN initiative is a creative response to the increasingly complex, quotidian violence that threatens Mexico. In a few words, the proposal is a call to mobilize people’s democracy from the ground up organized in the CNI's call to permanent assembly followed by the selection of two representatives from each Indigenous community throughout Mexico to form the Indigenous Governing Congress (CGI). It is the CGI that has selected María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, (or Marichuy as she is affectionately known) as a spokesperson who will enter into the upcoming electoral spectacle. The mobilization is not in fact to have an Indigenous woman sit in the presidential seat, but rather to use the elections as a platform to draw attention to the violence that threatens Mexico’s Indigenous communities while highlighting the grassroots democracy that is quickly spreading across Mexico in the form of permanent assemblies, the CGI, and the expanding and revitalized CNI network. Thus, the proposal is a call to revitalize the CNI and advance its mandate to stop the genocide that takes place alongside the violence of capitalist extractivism, a process of exploitation of land, resources, and people that disproportionately impacts originary peoples who are, more and more, visible as the first line of defense against the environmental and social destruction that threatens the planet's very survival.

Indigenous peoples of Mexico are determined to disrupt "the party," the lavish celebration enjoyed by elites each election cycle, by intervening in the national election as counter-spectacle. While Marichuy will be running as an independent candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, her purpose, and the goal of the CNI-Zapatistas as a whole, is not to win the presidential seat and pretend to direct Mexico's future from Los Pinos. Rather, the strategy is to open up a political space for dialogue and change from the bottom-up while also exposing the impact that the formal election has in co-opting the many grassroots organizations that have emerged and diverting the political energies of people on the ground. Change, as the Zapatistas say repeatedly, comes with organization, that is the hard work of finding new ways to come to agreement at all levels of social and political organization based on the examination of specific problems. In other words, change will not come through continued faith in the representative system and the elected leaders who perform already established roles reading from pre-determined scripts about progress and prosperity that will be reserved for a select few. Everyone knows that progress and prosperity as imagined by a few benefits an increasingly smaller group of select people with little care for the vast majority who struggle.

What does this effort by Mexico's diverse Indigenous community mean for autonomists outside of the country? First, it is worthwhile recognizing what and how much the initiative exposes in our own contexts. Many people are at first caught off guard. It is difficult to appreciate the effort and manage its critical tension, namely that it's at one moment a campaign for the presidency and in another it is not. The mobilization is not in fact to have an Indigenous woman sit in the presidential seat. Regardless of the outcome, the exercise of radical, that is direct, democracy by real people making decisions about their own struggles on an everyday basis has already been achieved in the permanent assemblies, the CGI, and the expanded and revitalized CNI network. The initiative has created space for this to proliferate across communities and regions.

This invites a serious collective "self-critique" for those of us in urban areas of the Global North. We are called upon to critically reflect if we ourselves are organized at the most local level and beyond/outside of any mediation or control of the electoral spectacle and the canard that is American style representative government —a prevarication violently being imposed throughout the world. What tools do we claim and make use of to arrive at agreement about how we interact with each other and our environment within spaces that sustain us, like a watershed or some other kind of environmentally sensitive region or even a territory previously inhabited and not yet conceded?

It is yet another provocation to move "beyond solidarity" as a central focus of our political work, a call to claim the struggle for ourselves in our locales. There is no aid in the form of food stuffs or other kinds of materiel we need send, although every little bit helps when we can share. We must join the effort. We must organize ourselves so that the decisions we make at a local, regional, and supra regional level are decisions that reflect a wisdom of living within appropriate limits, collectively deciding so that the lifestyle we claim does not impact others in regions far from us, does not impinge on those who suffer because of mining, displacements, and dispossessions required for the consumer products we take for granted. In this, we might recall Ivan Illich and Valentina Borremans call for us to claim a common, or shared roof. To do this, according to Illich and Borremans, we must refuse the technological imperative. "We call 'technological imperative,'" explain Illich and Borremans, "the idea that if any technological achievement is possible anywhere in the world, it should be realized and put in the service of some men, no matter the price that other members of the society must pay for it." Thus, it is how we reject the technological imperative that we must consider as a community —however that technological imperative may creep into our lives and determine our shared futures. "The rejection of the 'technological imperative' is the basis to initiate the search for the technological dimensions that would have to be subject to popular judgment so that the majority determines under which maximum limits it wants to live." (see, Illich and Borremans, "The Need for a Common Roof")

Since its beginning Universidad de la Tierra Califas has posed the problem asking: how do we transfer "technology" between struggles? That is to say, we have organized ourselves convening spaces of reflection and action to collectively investigate what must be done. Our driving motivation has been to arrive at a point that we can learn from other struggles. What tools can we learn from other communities of struggle that may or may not be applicable in our own context? Of course, we can make use of tools, conceptual and political, generated in other contexts, but we must claim them with caution. A tool like assembly would be a tool that we would want to take on, for example. The point is that we can not take for granted how these technologies work and how easily they may or may not be shared across struggles. The assembly, once common throughout all of Indigenous Mexico, if we can proffer generalizations at this point, is rooted in work and generated out of the need to make collective decisions about how a community organizes itself to produce what it needs and to manage the environment it engages. This is what what Grimaldo Rengifo calls crianza mutua. (see, G. Rengifo, "Niñez y ayllu en la cosmovisión andino-amazónica") But, how do we engage new tools when we are also trying to discover the practical and necessary limits that we must agree to in our locales?

At the core of this political force is the agreement, the most basic of convivial tools. How do we organize ourselves so the agreement is at the center of our political formation? "When we resist as a collective," explains Sup Moises, "it is done with discipline; that is through agreement. We make an agreement regarding how we are going to deal with different types of problems." (Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, "Resistance and Rebellion I,"Capitalist Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra p. 118.) The Zapatistas provide a cogent example and are worth quoting at length:

"With our resistance and rebellion, the Zapatista people, men and women, now have the right to speak. They have the freedom of expression and they have the right to be heard. Whether they dissent or not, they still have the right to be heard."

"At the same time, the people, men and women of free expression, are also free to think and propose, free to present opinions on what they think is a good idea or not. They are free to make proposals on how things could improve or on a new way of doing things. They have the freedom to study, think, and present new proposals. They are free to analyze and then say if they agree or don't agree. They are free to discuss in order to reach the best possible decision, the one with the most advantages, and to get to that point things have to be thoroughly discussed. Finally, our people have the freedom to decide which ideas will be put into practice." (Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, "Resistance and Rebellion II," Capitalist Thought in the Face of the Capitalist Hydra p. 133)

South Bay Crew

NB: If you are not already signed-up and would like to stay connected with the emerging Universidad de la Tierra Califas community please feel free to subscribe to the Universidad de la Tierra Califas listserve at the following url <https://lists.resist.ca/cgibi n/mailman/listinfo/unitierracalifas>. Also, if you would like to review previous ateneo announcements and summaries please check out UT Califas web page. Additional information on the ateneo in general can be found at: <http://ccra.mitotedigital.org /ateneo>. Also follow us on twitter: @UTCalifas. Please note we will be shifting our schedule so that the Democracy Ateneo (San Jose) will convene on the fourth Saturday of every even month. The opposite, or odd month, will be reserved for the Fierce Care Ateneo (Oakland). In this way, we are making every effort to maintain an open, consistent space of insurgent learning and convivial research that covers both sides of the Bay.

#UT Califas #Universidad de la tierra califas #democracy ateneo #EZLN #CNI #Zapatistas #DACA

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