Metal Monday

I have been doing Metal Monday weekly for a year now with the singular goal of writing more. Good or bad, just write more. It’s fun! And a great way for me to have a diary for the media I consume before it drains from my brain completely. I am always extremely grateful to those who read.

YouTube Obsession

I am, if anything, a creature of habit. Anytime big political events start to happen I run to the one source that I can trust: Hasan. Like many people, I originally started watching Hasan on his Twitch channel while he was live covering the January 6th attempted¹ coup.

I don’t agree with everything he says but, regardless, he’s entertaining. I think Gita Jackson, then of Waypoint Radio, put it aptly: “Hasan is the closest thing we have to a leftist Rush Limbaugh.”

I started re-engaging with Hasan’s streams after Dr. Disrespect admitted to being a pedophile and since then US politics has blown up.

The most decrepit presidential debate² , supreme court vindicating Nixon and an assassination attempt on Trump; Just to name the highlights.

Needless to say, we live in interesting times and sometimes a little leftist shit-talking is what I need to get through the day.

Watching

While being bed-ridden most of last week I finally sat down and binged the first season of Game of Thrones. I was certainly aware of the cultural phenomenon that GoT held on, seemingly, everyone. I wasn’t interested for two reasons, I didn’t have HBO and fantasy is goofballs clown-shoes for baby.

I’m sure I have a longer more thought-out post on why Sci-Fi is better than fantasy but I’ll abbreviate: Sci-Fi is about people. Fantasy is about God.

In Sci-Fi, if something exists in the world, say a laser gun; In that world, a human had to research, experiment and create that laser gun. It implies a huge humanistic world. In fantasy if someone shoots a fireball out of their wand it’s because some other power gives them that power (Usually a god).³

All that being said, GoT season 1 is good, low level fantasy more interested in politics than shooting fireballs.

Although, I have a bone to pick with all the Jon Snow fan gifs floating around tumblr at in 2011. Really? This is your fave? Jon Snow is most pick-me-daddy cuck idiot in the entire show. I have no idea why people were so in love with this character at the time, he’s lame as hell; In the very best way. He clings to honor and his family: The honor means nothing to anyone and his family cares so much for him they essentially banish him to the wall. He’s a hilariously written, a simp for house Stark that it’s obvious this guy is gonna die⁴ .

Partly why I’m watching GoT now is because everyone at work is talking about the new spin-off show at work. Zero interest, but someone said they can’t recommend GoT because the last season is so bad. Honestly, that intrigues me. I love when creators attempt to unshackle themselves from their creation by burning it’s legacy to the ground. Think Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, End of Evangelion or even to an extent The Sopranos.⁵ So hopefully the last season is more “Is this what you want you pigs?!” mean and not just, like, bad.

I’ll keep you updated!

Playing/Reading

It’s very difficult for me to read lore in video games. Mostly because I’m rarely invested in a video game world enough to read 32pt font books on my tv screen when there ghouls to be shot in the head. Immersive sims break the mold because they exist on the principle that the world has to be interesting for the player to want to be immersed in: Like Deus Ex, Dishonored and Prey. Even then I tend to skip a lot of text.⁸

The last game that I read every piece of media was Remedy’s Control from 2019. It was so well written and from a genuinely interesting setting that I could not wait for the next lore dump.⁶

That was until this week when I started playing Caves of Qud.

Due to its ASCII-inspired art style, this is a game that almost entirely depends on its writing. And it is so weird and good. It is a truly unique post-post-apocalypse world that cannot be related to any other fictional world.⁷ For the first time since playing TTRPGs with friends back in the day have I been inspired to draw my character.

And Shwubas as he is in my mind and the items he currently has equipped.

Needless to say, I have not been so eager to roleplay a character in such a long long time. Even excellent role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate 3 restrict my imagination because they are too descriptive graphically, they don’t allow my brain to fill in the gaps.

I’ve been playing Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead for years so I picked up the controls for Qud quickly. With Qud’s most recent patch the controls and UI are the best and most intuitive they have ever been, making it easy for anyone to learn. Just Like CDDA, every run is a permadeath run. You will die and will die often but each time, you will learn something new about the ever-interesting world of Qud.

Qud is currently in early access but it has never been more accessible to a new player. The game now offers starting settings for first time runs and I highly recommend using them as this is a game that benefits from taking it easy.

Even when I am at work, I find myself thinking about that cave entrance I saw on my way to Red Rocks on a quest to find out what has been eating Joppa’s watervine. What is inside, what weird esoterica awaits?

Listening

I’ve decided that I’m going to talk about music. It will rarely be new stuff, because as discussed before, I’m not always onto new music. So, every week, in the official Year 2 Edition^TM of Metal Monday, I will be talking about an album, artist, or song that I love.

I’m going to start with one of my favorite albums of all time, a top 5 for sure:

Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins¹⁰

I can still remember when I first heard the opening lullaby-esq tune of the track Today. That feeling when the tune exploded into electric guitar rock, I knew I had never heard anything like this. I was in 5th grade and everyone around me continued as normal but I felt everything had changed. I was instantly a fan.

Luckily, I was able to borrow the album from a friend of my older sister and they never asked for it back. Every song is an absolute banger and harkens back to pre-80s vocal rock despite being from the heart of the grunge era. Billy Corgan’s voice is -still- so unique in the rock genre that it’s difficult to equate any contemporaries.

I especially want to talk about track 9: Mayonaise. Like the track 4 Hummer, it bathes the listener in melodic fuzz but Mayonaise did something my 11yo brain had never heard a rock song do: It made itself imperfect. At the peak of its crescendo chorus, it drops all sound and shocks the listener with amplifier feedback. It was so abrupt at the time that, at first, I didn’t care for the song but I would say now that is one of my favorites.

Siamese Dream is a success, it feels like a dream.

I also want to express my gratitude for The Smashing Pumpkins and when they arrived in my life. In the late 90s and early 2000s the tidal wave of Nu Metal would take over popular music. I was already a Pumpkins fan⁹ so music like ꓘoRn or Linkin Park just couldn’t stick with me. Don’t get me wrong I love some songs from that era even if just from osmosis and nostalgia but overall the genre is cringe af and certainly “of a time”.

I could talk about the weirdness of Nu Metal and it’s rise for days but I’ll have to save it for it’s own post.

Other Notables

** Cops are dumber than you can even imagine

** Pleasures drops an Evangelion inspired line

** Considering my history with filming on VHS, this trailer has me excited:

1 

1  Read: Failed.

2  Where literally the most heated it gets is when they talk about golf handicaps.

3  I am well aware that this is a gross generalization but 9 out of 10 times it’s true.

4  The best part about watching something way after the discourse is over is that I can basically watch this in a vacuum. Idk if Snow dies, but geeze you have to put him out of his misery eventually.

5  The Sopranos is the most obvious example of a creator that hates his audience, making them look at their favorite characters be more and more horrible every episode.

6  I can hear Andrew yelling at me to play Alan Wake.

7  The only similar vibes is the TTRPG Troika!

8  What always surprises me is when folks talk about Skyrim lore. Listen. I’m not here to bang on anyone’s faves but Skyrim is like boilerplate high fantasy.

9  And Rage Against the Machine, more on that in a future post.

10  I feel it should be completely obvious after reading this review that I have zero musical ability or understanding of theory. This is a very personal appraisal of music and how it effects me.