tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.comments2024-03-22T17:14:36.551-04:00Wasteland And SkyJD Cowanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03548340507655076198noreply@blogger.comBlogger1493125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-43402800480355736372024-03-21T13:16:08.816-04:002024-03-21T13:16:08.816-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Don B. Owenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09367356391906734601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-33051106460768217922024-03-21T13:14:22.330-04:002024-03-21T13:14:22.330-04:00Great article, JD! The 2030's can't get h...Great article, JD! The 2030's can't get here soon enough!Don B. Owenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09367356391906734601noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-3944060968101143912024-02-22T21:07:02.064-05:002024-02-22T21:07:02.064-05:00You hit the nail on the head, re: Geek Culture as ...You hit the nail on the head, re: Geek Culture as defunct substitute religion. They call democracy the god that failed, but the Pop Cult failed harder.<br /><br />On that note, I had a realization while contemplating the Rachid Lotf pastiche above. Link was an explicitly Catholic character back then. So was Alex Murphy, whose rebirth as Robocop was stated outright by Verhoeven to be a resurrection metaphor. George Lucas as similarly called the Force another word for God, and Luke Skywalker can be seen as a monk ascending the stages of the spiritual life throughout the original trilogy. Even Ghostbusters pays respect to Sacred Scripture.<br /><br />In light of those insights and more, it occurred to me that the 80s and 90s saw the last explosion of popular art derived from Christian culture. Ground Zero was the well running dry.<br /><br />But that wasn't the crisis. The real crisis was Gen Y kids missing the invitation all their favorite IPs were extending to look deeper and let their minds be elevated to the Truth and Beauty behind those media. They were tested and failed. Instead of illumination, they got geekdom. Instead of the Truth, they got the Pop Cult.SChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07581652190466314341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-8257496078732692012024-01-23T07:50:25.870-05:002024-01-23T07:50:25.870-05:00The big problem of the industry is the lack of soc...The big problem of the industry is the lack of social capital made of people who love the "morals" of arcade gaming. The focus on full-throttle fun, time as a precious resource for both sides (player and devs), the notion of improvement and mastery as a reward in itself, and of good competition; all of these require a certain kind of man, who is endangered species pretty much everywhere but especially in all entertainment. Many games seem to be made by and for people who just need their time to pass by them, and their nervous receptors to feel numb for a while.<br /><br />I believe videogames need their own kind of BROSR.<br /><br />P.S.: You always recommend very good video makers. This guy just gets on my good side, I love him.Heorothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11232241502230784674noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-76198662397662948382024-01-22T16:49:23.638-05:002024-01-22T16:49:23.638-05:00The use of the video game crash as a tool to dismi...The use of the video game crash as a tool to dismiss basically everything pre-NES, as well as the dominance of DOS/Windows in PCs and the accompanying downplaying of every other 1980s PC platform (that's a lot of games and hardware), places a lot of really gaping holes in the foundation of the medium. A lot of lessons and examples of great game designs, along with odd experiments and dead-ends, just being ignored.Andyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14624614486574035692noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-60760095199001007912024-01-08T07:54:12.572-05:002024-01-08T07:54:12.572-05:00What a crazy story that was LOL I didn't know ...What a crazy story that was LOL I didn't know much about it in spite loving Bubblegum. Thanks for sharing this with us.<br /><br />It speak to the power of what they were doing that the series survived as a cult classic in spite of all the hardships. Bubblegum Crisis is what NewPub should strive to be: ideas so pure and so cool that they can't live the mind and soul of the reader!Heorothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11232241502230784674noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-91912183225540155972024-01-01T17:42:11.865-05:002024-01-01T17:42:11.865-05:00I realize this is a year late, but I was reading t...I realize this is a year late, but I was reading through my new copy of the Revised and Expanded Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and noticed the name of Donald Wollheim. Apparently he was involved with the 'pirated' Ace Books edition of LotR, and tried to mollify Tolkien by offering that the royalties be set aside into a "Tolkien Award" for upcoming authors. (This would have been the full royalty, apparently; if Tolkien insisted on payment for his work, he'd only get half of it.) Seeing that in the context of the fandom affairs makes it seem even more sordid than it already did.M. L. Martinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16079559988227795442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-62285536753162369822023-12-30T15:56:36.585-05:002023-12-30T15:56:36.585-05:00It really is shocking that soon, the 20th century ...It really is shocking that soon, the 20th century will have been over for 30 years. Yet no one can leave that cursed period behind. <br /><br />Most telling is that it's the self-styled Progressives who promised a shiny, sexy utopia who are perpetuating dead ideas from the past. What does socialism even mean when every government has been in bed with big business for decades? How can the secular Devil be a clear and present threat when he died in a bunker 80 years ago?<br /><br />Even the nerd lords of Silicon Valley, who promised us whiz-bang tech solutions to all our problems, can only mutter litanies to malfunctioning A.I. that's made the internet in 2023 less useful than in 1993.<br /><br />Meanwhile, nations our rulers dismiss as "Ten years behind us economically" and "a gas station run by peasants" are dealing us one humiliation after another on the global stage.<br /><br />The West is haunted by the ghost of the 20th century. Time for an exorcism.SChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07581652190466314341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-63606359228166408492023-12-14T13:16:52.166-05:002023-12-14T13:16:52.166-05:00Woot! "Duel on Dalpha"Woot! "Duel on Dalpha"SChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07581652190466314341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-21125555268287226832023-12-12T06:02:03.922-05:002023-12-12T06:02:03.922-05:00It leaves a sour taste, to know that the "gra...It leaves a sour taste, to know that the "graphics first" mindset you hate is based on the console gen of your childhood, but it is better to be aware of it. Unfortunately, years of "design theory" and "industry research" has failed to understand that seed planted in the Fifth Gen have become suffocating and unsustainable. Not that the big colossi of electronics would care, since they run on infinite imaginary money but what can you do about it anyway except ignoring them.<br /><br />As a side note, oh boy, that 2006 conference was ugly...Heorothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11232241502230784674noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-57075918623321097842023-12-09T23:54:46.982-05:002023-12-09T23:54:46.982-05:00This is what people who want Nintendo to make a &q...This is what people who want Nintendo to make a "AAA" console don't understand.<br /><br />They aren't a billion dollar corpo with effectively unlimited resources that can tank failure after failure. Microsoft has only had 1 of their 4 consoles so far ever reach the black, and yet they're still pumping them out. They will NEVER have a Sega moment, and that is a negative for the video game industry. Because of that we are destined for PlayStation Consecutive Number Vs Xbox Random Number until the end of time.<br /><br />The HD "AAA" mutation killed off countless publishers and pared the entire industry down to mudgenre slop and devolving iterations of 7th generation ideas over and over again. This is basically their version of modern Hollywood.<br /><br />It's a very lame timeline we live in. This is why I am thankful for indies and the middle market.JD Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03548340507655076198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-45258072472731246062023-12-09T20:09:11.100-05:002023-12-09T20:09:11.100-05:00One aspect - and root cause of the decline you doc...One aspect - and root cause of the decline you document is that the 5th gen marks the twilight of a video game market curated by game companies and the dawn of rule by electronics and software giants. <br /><br />It's an open secret that Sony, for instance, never cared about video games. They almost fired Ken Kutaragi for his dalliance with Nintendo. Even when they gave him the green light to make the Play Station, the project was relegated to a corner of the music department with a scrap of their budget. Hence why the PS1 is a glorified Sony CD player cobbled together from off-the-rack parts.<br /><br />The 5th gen was when outfits with a passion for reproducing arcade-perfect experiences like Sega or supplying good fun for the whole family like Nintendo gave way to megacorps that see games as Trojan horses to surround customers with higher-margin products. Worst timeline.Brian Niemeierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15276948258089365826noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-42261013016229091742023-11-11T23:28:49.641-05:002023-11-11T23:28:49.641-05:00"Many people have theorized the New Coke stun..."Many people have theorized the New Coke stunt wasn't actually to revive a slowly dying brand, but to make it cheaper to produce by removing the last extracts of the cocoa plant and replacing it with the ever-harmful and well-hated High Fructose Corn Syrup. That isn't so much a theory since that's exactly what happened. Coca Cola Classic that existed before New Coke never actually came back on the market."<br /><br />Coca-Cola still contains coca leaf extract. They get it from the Stepan Company in New Jersey.<br /><br />https://nj1015.com/jersey-puts-the-coca-in-coca-cola/<br /><br />https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/nj-factory-imports-cocaine-plant-for-coca-cola-due-to-dea-arrangement/<br /><br />Also, Coca-Cola started using high-fructose corn syrup in 1980, and had fully switched over to it in 1984, a year before introducing New Coke.<br /><br />You can still get Coca-Cola that's more or less the same as it was pre-1980 by buying Mexican Coca-Cola (that is to say, the type of Coca-Cola made in Mexico with pure cane sugar expressly for export to the U.S. - the kind actually sold in Mexico contains sucralose).<br /><br />However, one must be careful now, as there is now a type of Mexican Coca-Cola containing high-fructose corn syrup being sold in at least one place in America (San Antonio). However, it appears that the version with cane sugar is still intended to be sold for the foreseeable future. You can tell the two apart by the cap color. The cane sugar version has a red cap, while the high-fructose corn syrup version has a green cap.<br /><br />https://www.expressnews.com/food/article/mexican-coke-san-antonio-cane-sugar-17843506.phphbenthowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13797195539880473914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-38358341438204722802023-11-09T20:50:15.564-05:002023-11-09T20:50:15.564-05:00When you think about it, mourning the death of mas...When you think about it, mourning the death of mass pop culture is a peculiar Gen Y sentiment. For most of history, the majority of people lived on remote farms or insular villages where hardly anyone had heard of the king. And it was better.Brian Niemeierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15276948258089365826noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-27645451671750826522023-10-27T11:54:24.709-04:002023-10-27T11:54:24.709-04:00I'm a Y (born 1980) married to an X (born 1974...I'm a Y (born 1980) married to an X (born 1974). My best friend, D, is a Y (born 1985-ish) newly married to a Millenial (born 1995-ish?). I think we've both dodged this bullet more the most part because we both grew up in cultural pockets, or that weird counter-culture called evangelical protestantism. It is far from perfect, but perhaps the evangelical suspicion of secular mass culture kept us out of the Pop Cult to Death Cult funnel. On the other hand, most of my peers from college are X or Y. Some display Pop Cult affinities or worse, seem to have aligned with the Death Cult.<br />I share your hope for our generation. I pray we come to our senses before it's too late and "choose life, that [we] may live". The intellectual and cultural death you're describing is the death of immortal souls, playing out before our eyes. As a generation, we must turn back to God, or go on dying forever.A Readerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15288199981382663362noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-73314283368263058922023-10-26T13:45:33.945-04:002023-10-26T13:45:33.945-04:00Hipsters were the Gen Y siblings of Gen X boutique...Hipsters were the Gen Y siblings of Gen X boutique existentialists who tried to emulate their yuppie parents but couldn't afford it.SChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07581652190466314341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-36118061221791740572023-10-15T22:34:28.088-04:002023-10-15T22:34:28.088-04:001996 was a strange year for the genre. Don't t...1996 was a strange year for the genre. Don't think anyone would've been able to call how influential both Quake and DN3D ended up being on the current wave of shooters back then.<br /><br />But it's good to see their influence lives on. They both hold up great.JD Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03548340507655076198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-68530638405194744902023-10-11T19:08:00.959-04:002023-10-11T19:08:00.959-04:00I've started playing Quake II a couple of time...I've started playing Quake II a couple of times and didn't finish either time. First time, my PC melted down and I just lost my progress. Second time, I just lost interest and started playing other stuff. I think id missed Romero a lot more than anyone wanted to admit at the time. The guy really does have a brilliant game design mind, especially for FPSs.<br /><br />The funny thing about Quake is that at the time, I remember there was real spirited debate as to whether it was even better than Duke Nukem 3D. Quake had the technical advantage being full 3D, but Duke had the level destruction capabilities of the Build engine and some crazy weapons and just a lot of personality. The two games coexist more comfortably now.Andyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14624614486574035692noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-41296921331672964392023-09-27T18:37:37.568-04:002023-09-27T18:37:37.568-04:00Thank you for the additions!Thank you for the additions!JD Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03548340507655076198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-31884796482863390282023-09-27T02:40:15.469-04:002023-09-27T02:40:15.469-04:00There's also another interesting blog post abo...There's also another interesting blog post about the revisions here:<br /><br />https://booksinheat.blogspot.com/2017/09/library-days-hardy-boys.html<br /><br />"I was recently introduced to a specific series of YouTube videos by someone on Twitter (my mind slipped on who, I apologize)"<br /><br />It was me. Apology accepted.<br /><br />"It is strange that the anti-censorship crowd never brings this up, do they? It appears that censorship is only a problem if you do not contain "modern day sensibilities" in its pages."<br /><br />To be fair, most people simply don't know about it, even among those who grew up reading the revised editions.<br /><br />There are also quite a few other examples of revision, bowdlerization, and censorship throughout the years as well.<br /><br />For example, many of the 19th century English translations of Jules Verne's books (which are among the most commonly-sold due to being in the public domain) contain significant omissions and changes.<br /><br />Mercier Lewis' translation of "Twenty Thousands Leagues Under the Seas"*, which is the most widely available (and sold as "complete and unabridged"), cuts out about 1/4 of the text and makes many other significant changes, some of them intended to remove some of Verne's political themes (especially those criticizing the British Empire).<br /><br />* Most English translations, including the Mercier Lewis one, refer to it as "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", but the final word of the original French title "Vingt mille Lieues Sous Les Mers" is plural, not singular.<br /><br />The infamous 1871 Griffith and Farran translation of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" contains massive rewrites and even changes characters' names from Professor Lidenbrock, Axel, and Grauben to Professor Hardwigg, Alex, and Gretchen. Fortunately, the 1876 translation published by George Routledge and Sons and the 1877 translation by Frederick Amadeus Malleson (published by Ward, Lock, & Co.) are pretty solid.<br /><br />There are other instances as well. Part of the reason that Verne wasn't taken seriously (being seen as merely a "boy's author") for over a century in English-speaking countries is because so many of his works were poorly translated. Nowadays, there are many high-quality Verne translations by knowledgeable Verne scholars, but that wasn't yet the case even a half-century ago.<br /><br />Another example of book censorship from years ago is "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (first published in 1964). The Oompa-Loompas were originally portrayed as essentially African Pygmies. However, there was backlash over this for years, so Roald Dahl gave in to pressure and revised his book in 1973 to change them into hippie-like characters with rosy-white skin and long golden-brown hair. They have stayed that way in all reprints since then. Even two years before this revision, Mel Stuart's movie adaptation portrayed them as orange-faced, green-haired fantasy people.<br /><br />Starting in 1988, reprints of "The Story of Doctor Dolittle" have removed references to the race of characters and most notably remove the subplot of the African Prince Bumpo wanting to be turned white, replacing it with a new subplot in which he gets hypnotized.hbenthowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13797195539880473914noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-32903967628315580062023-08-19T21:13:54.061-04:002023-08-19T21:13:54.061-04:00Really, it is a way to track changes across demogr...Really, it is a way to track changes across demographics from the beginning of the 20th century to the end. Obviously that means there will be a lot of melting on the fringes, which everyone admits is the case.<br /><br />Naturally this means there are different perspectives to be found amidst this vast span of time. This should be considered a good thing and worth talking about.<br /><br />But it just ends up being about "grouping people bad" or something, even though it says nothing about character or personality. It merely tracks cultural trends and influences. That's it.JD Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03548340507655076198noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-44265400755407548302023-08-19T21:03:42.552-04:002023-08-19T21:03:42.552-04:00It's weird seeing older Gen Xers trying to ret...It's weird seeing older Gen Xers trying to retcon the start of the Millennial generation to 1980. The documentation I've seen dates the lumping together of Gen Y and Millennials to ca. 2013. That's a full 12 years after the article you found which said outright that they're 2 separate cohorts, but Madison Ave. was phasing Ys out in their pursuit of ad revenue.<br /><br />More proof that the more you claim to believe nothing, the more you'll believe anything.Brian Niemeierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15276948258089365826noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-84697883833232454242023-06-30T10:21:24.746-04:002023-06-30T10:21:24.746-04:00Echoes very similar sentiments as here.
https://b...Echoes very similar sentiments as here.<br /><br />https://barsoom.substack.com/p/safety-last<br /><br />How successful this feces will be long term is debatable/questionable (Owing to the fact that China is a bigger market for their media), but it's clear that this is coming from the same place as Hideaki Anno's own self-critique of EVA's influence (Which likely motivated him to make the Rebuild Movies and continuously push for Gunbuster as the one people should watch instead of EVA). <br /><br />A move away from self-indulgent trope/reference porn is necessary. You could have also mentioned G Witch as an example of this issue of Safetyism.Mackleberry221https://www.blogger.com/profile/06913389584736646150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-47820626143583541032023-06-25T11:14:52.326-04:002023-06-25T11:14:52.326-04:00I've been thinking about this blog post for a ...I've been thinking about this blog post for a few days. Japan is more woke than the US, they just compartmentalize it. I remember in the 90s reading an article about how in some Japan magazine, there was an ad asking for 12 year old girls to solicit grown men "in order to make lots of pocket money!" A book my mom read ("Don't forget to bow" about growing up a white kid growing up in Japan) talked about going to a karoke bar, and how there was gay pr0n playing on the big screen across from the stage, and how sick it made the narrator. Japan is far, far more woke than the US. In fact, they're down at the nadir of it, but their culture is different than ours, so it doesn't show as much. It's why their birthrate is so far below replacement level, and their whole culture is dying of ennui.Kessiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15019626781634777336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4520528486728008071.post-88271271693211706662023-06-22T13:11:32.392-04:002023-06-22T13:11:32.392-04:00The Based Japan zombie meme won't die because ...The Based Japan zombie meme won't die because the fraction of dissidents who are just Libertarians that hate brown folks and Jews cling to it as their escape pod.<br /><br />Japan's relative distance from Western culture delayed its infection by Wokeism, but it also kept them from developing antibodies.Brian Niemeierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15276948258089365826noreply@blogger.com