It’s been a busy week and apparently everything is on fire.

YouTube Obsession

I really respect a channel that does one thing and does it very well. Splattercat Gaming shows a different indie game everyday. He’s a great resource for discovering new games that I otherwise would have missed.

He does tend to linger in the menus for too long at the beginning of his videos but that’s a small quibble.

Reading

As a huge fan of Metal Gear Solid: V, I am ashamed to admit that I have never read Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I believe I attempted to read it in junior high and was almost instantly turned away by its obtuse and outdated language. Even as an adult it can be a little jarring (“Counterpane” is used to refer to a “blanket” lol) but as my literary maturity has grown, so has my ability to immensely enjoy this book.

I am surprised, actually, at how casual the prose is compared to what I had built it up to in my mind. It’s funny too! It is definitely a critique of the (then) modern absurdities of life and the silly social rules of 1851.

**

After reading a great critique of Romeo and Juliet and the New York Review of Books, it got me very interested in reading more Shakespeare as it’s a huge blind-spot in my literary knowledge. And like any good compulsive, I have to start from the beginning and most scholars agree, Henry VI are his earliest plays.

Determined to enjoy these readings, I decided that I would listen to a stage production as I read the annotated version on the Folger Shakespeare Library website.

This. This is how the internet was meant to be used. Using two mediums simultaneously to read and study Shakespeare is an incredible way to finally get Shakespeare. The prose is so much better when performed and having the notes always available when I am stumped by a word or reference is key to adding context. I kinda get why he’s a big deal now. I’m excited to get to his other, more dramatic, less historical plays.

Playing

It is probably obvious to my readers considering how much I talk about the Metal Gear Solid series but I love a good stealth game. Dishonored, Intervenous II, Thief, if a game has a stealth option, I am playing that option. So when Styx: Shards of Darkness went on sale for $2 I picked it up, fully expecting to play a little and be done. 5 hours and 1am later…

Please overlook the cringe character and attempts at humor, it does not get better in the game. Definitely the worst part of the game is the dialog and quip writing, though hardly unique in this Borderlands 2 era.

But the stealth gameplay is chef’s kiss muah! So much player agency is baked into the core level design. See a locked room? There are probably 7 different ways to get into that room depending on how you want to play the game. Add in simple RPG elements to upgrade Styx enhancing your play style and I’m so ready for more of this series. Just, tone down on the meme references.

Listening

Bonnie “Prince” Billy dropping a folky eco-activism song just in time for the world to catch on fire.

Other Notables

** “Disinformation, though, has been a convenient narrative for a Democratic establishment unwilling to reckon with its own role in upholding anti-immigrant narratives, or repeating baseless fearmongering over crime rates, and failing to support the multiracial working class.”

** “It is also untrue that if a gun hangs on the wall when you open up the story, it must be fired by page fourteen. The chances are, gentlemen, that if it hangs upon the wall, it will not even shoot.” Ernest Hemingway “The Paris Review” 1959

** David Wain of The State being effortlessly funny in the dumbest way….